McFadden, Daniel Little (1937-…), is an American economist and teacher who won the 2000 Nobel Prize for economic science. He shared the award with the American economist James J. Heckman for their use of statistical methods and theories in the analysis of lifestyle decisions (see Heckman, James Joseph ). Much of McFadden’s research focused on how people decide where to live, when to marry, how many children to have, how to travel, and what to buy.
McFadden is a professor of economics at the University of California at Berkeley. He has contributed greatly to the field of econometrics, a branch of economics that treats economic relationships mathematically. His research on travel demand influenced the design of the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) commuter train system in San Francisco. His studies on the economics of aging led to investments in telephone service and housing for elderly people. He also developed methods used in evaluating the damage of the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989.
McFadden was born in Raleigh, North Carolina. He earned his bachelor’s degree in physics from the University of Minnesota in 1957. He received his Ph.D. in economics from the same university in 1962. Following graduation, he taught at the University of Pittsburgh. He began teaching economics at the University of California in 1963. He has also taught at Yale University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
In addition to writing many journal articles, McFadden helped edit Essays on Economic Behavior Under Uncertainty (1974), Urban Travel Demand: A Behavioral Analysis (1975), and Handbook of Econometrics (1994).
