This paper summarizes the contributions of microeconometrics to economic knowledge. Four main themes are developed. (1) Microeconometricians developed new tools to respond to econometric problems raised by the analysis of the new sources of micro data produced after the Second World War. (2) Microeconometrics improved on aggregate time-series methods by building models that linked economic models for individuals to data on individual behavior. (3) An important empirical regularity detected by the field is the diversity and heterogeneity of behavior. This heterogeneity has profound consequences for economic theory and for econometric practice. (4) Microeconometrics has contributed substantially to the scientific evaluation of public policy.

This paper examines the argument presented in The Bell Curve. A central argument is that one factor--g--accounts for correlation across test scores and performance in society. Another central argument is that g cannot be manipulated. These arguments are combined to claim that social policies designed to improve social performance cannot be effective. A reanalysis of the evidence contradicts this story. The factors that explain wages receive different weights than the factors that explain test scores. More than g is required to explain either. Other factors besides g contribute to social performance, and they can be manipulated.

This paper estimates a dynamic model of schooling attainment to investigate the sources of racial and ethnic disparity in college attendance. Parental income in the child's adolescent years is a strong predictor of this disparity. This is widely interpreted to mean that credit constraints facing families during the college-going years are important. Using NLSY data, we find that it is the long-run factors associated with parental background and family environment, and not credit constraints facing prospective students in the college-going years, that account for most of the racial-ethnic college-going differential. Policies aimed at improving these long-term family and environmental factors are more likely to be successful in eliminating college attendance differentials than short-term tuition reduction and family income supplement policies aimed at families with college age children.

This paper examines an empirical regularity found in many societies: that family influences on the probability of transiting from one grade level to the next diminish at higher levels of education. We examine the statistical model used to establish the empirical regularity and the intuitive behavioral interpretation often used to rationalize it. We show that the implicit economic model assumes myopia. The intuitive interpretive model is identified only by imposing arbitrary distributional assumptions onto the data. We produce an alternative choice‐theoretic model with fewer parameters that rationalizes the same data and is not based on arbitrary distributional assumptions.

In this paper, we discuss statistical problems that arise in studying sequences of quantal responses (e.g., labor force participation) in panel data on heterogeneous populations (i.e., populations in which there is unobserved variation in response probabilities). Assuming that response probabilities are governed by a beta distribution, we derive a generalization on of the cross-section logit model to enable it to deal with sequences of discrete events in panel data. This model is applied to panel data on labor force participation of married women. One of our findings is that the distribution of participation probabilities is U shaped, indicating that most women have participation probabilities near zero or near one.

Gary Becker was an intellectual giant. No one had a greater impact on broadening economics and making its impact felt throughout the social sciences thanBecker. Indeed,MiltonFriedmanoncedescribedGaryBecker as the most important social scientist of the second half of the twentieth century. For those of us who knew him, he was themost creative thinker we ever encountered. It was his astounding imagination that made many of his early critics think of him as a heretic. They were correct: he was a heretic much like Luther, Copernicus, and Galileo, who transformed their worlds, just ashe transformedeconomics.Hebrought a rigorous and insightful approach to issues that were viewed as inherently noneconomic. Eventually, he won over the economics profession, detractors and all, who eventually became converts. Becker was a scientist in the true sense of the word.He believed that economics was useful only if it explained andhelped to improve theworld.He practiced what he preached and carefully analyzed all of the social problems he addressed. He was innovative yet rigorous, open to new thought yet disciplined in sticking to the established rules of analysis. Most importantly, he extended the boundaries of economics tomuch of social science.