Daniel McFadden

Daniel Little McFadden (born July 29, 1937) is an econometrician who shared the 2000 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with James Heckman ; McFadden's share of the prize was "for his development of theory and methods for analyzing discrete choice". He was the E. Morris Cox Professor of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley.

McFadden was born in Raleigh, North Carolina. He attended the University of Minnesota, where he received a B.S. in Physics at age 19, and a Ph.D. in Behavioral Science (Economics) five years later (1962). While at the University of Minnesota, his graduate advisor was Leonid Hurwicz, who was awarded the Economics Nobel Prize in 2007.

In 1964, McFadden joined the faculty of UC Berkeley and focused his research in areas including choice behavior and the problem of linking economic theory and measurement. He won the John Bates Clark Medal in 1975 and the Erwin Plein Nemmers Prize in Economics in 2000. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1981. In 1977, he moved to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, but returned to Berkeley in 1991. After his return, McFadden founded the Econometrics Laboratory, which is devoted to statistical computation for economics applications. He remains its director. He is a trustee of the Economists for Peace and Security.

In January 2011, Dr. McFadden was appointed the Presidential Professor of Health Economics at the University of Southern California (USC), and the announcement of this appointment was published on January 10, 2011. Professor McFadden will have joint appointments at the USC School of Policy, Planning, and Development and the Department of Economics at USC College to examine fundamental problems facing the health care sector, looking specifically at how consumers make choices about health insurance and medical services.