Profile of Charles F. Manski

Abstract

Charles Manski has a history of questioning dogma. Manski, who was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2009 and is currently a professor of economics at Northwestern University (Evanston, IL), has developed new methods in theoretical and empirical econometrics over the course of his career. In his Inaugural Article (1), he builds on his recent work on planning under ambiguity, a common problem for many policymakers. Policymakers are in the business of making tough decisions with a paucity of data. No one can possibly know how all taxation schedules, criminal justice laws, or vaccination programs will influence labor supplies, crime rates, and spread of disease, respectively. Therefore, what is a policymaker to do under this common condition of partial knowledge? Traditional economic approaches to this problem use subjective probabilities that are often based on convenient nonrefutable assumptions. Throw those assumptions out, says Manski, “Economists usually want to find the optimal solution to something…That's not the way I operate…I'm satisfied to throw out things that are demonstrably bad.” Rather than create a solution based on so-called “assumptions of convenience,” Manski has championed an approach in which weaker but more credible assumptions can reveal informative conclusions (2). Throwing away traditional assumptions means that a single optimal solution may have to give way to a range of good solutions. However, Manski, unlike some other scientists and many politicians, is, he says, “not uncomfortable with ambiguity.” Charles Manski was born in 1948, the child of what he calls a “classic American immigrant” family, and grew up in Boston, MA. His father fled from Poland during World War II and put himself through night school to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree. His mother's education ended at high school. However, Manski and his two brothers managed to earn advanced degrees. “It's not like …