Charles F. Manski

Curriculum Vitae

Short Biography

Further information at charlesmanski.com

Autobiographical Reflections: Unlearning and Discovery, ET Interview with E. Tamer, Interview with S. Bowmaker, Interview with P. Barrieu

 

 

Excerpts from Discourse on Social Planning under Uncertainty (p. 1-2) and What is the General Welfare? (p.1-2):

 

“A foundational objective of the Constitution of the United States is to ‘promote the general Welfare.’ The Preamble states:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

The Constitution does not define ‘general Welfare.’ . . . .The Constitutional premise that the United States should promote the general welfare . . . exemplif[ies] broad assertions that entities making societal decisions should aim to maximize social welfare. Such assertions may have rhetorical appeal but they lack substance. They become meaningful only when several questions are answered: What constitutes social welfare? What are the feasible actions? What is known about the welfare consequences of alternative choices?”

 

“The vagueness of the Constitutional term general Welfare contrasts with the specificity of welfare economic study of public policy. Economists assume a particular social welfare function (SWF) or a well-defined class of SWFs. Research in public economics seeks to characterize the social welfare achieved by alternative feasible policies, aiming to find one that maximizes an SWF. Economists studying policy choice in democracies strive to specify SWFs that in some manner express the values of population members rather than the preferences of dictators. The U.S. Constitution begins with the words “We the People” and refers to the general Welfare. It does not endorse the April 2025 proclamation of Donald Trump to journalists at the Atlantic that ‘I run the country and the world.’ ”

 

 

Recent and Forthcoming Articles

 

What is the General Welfare?: Welfare Economic Perspectives on Equity, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2026.

 

Accounting for Nonresponse in Election Polls: Total Margin of Error, with J. Dominitz, Journal of the American Statistical Association, 2025.

 

Econometrics for Credible Policy Choice under Uncertainty, Journal of Political Economy Micro, forthcoming.

 

Comprehensive OOS Evaluation of Predictive Algorithms with Statistical Decision Theory, with J. Dominitz, Quantitative Economics, forthcoming.

 

Working Papers

 

Coping with Inductive Risk when Theories Are Underdetermined: Decision Making with Partial Identification

 

A Decision Theoretic Perspective on Artificial Superintelligence: Coping with Missing Data Problems in Prediction and Treatment Choice, with J. Dominitz

 

Utilitarian or Quantile-Welfare Evaluation of Health Policy?, with J. Mullahy

 

Prediction with Differential Covariate Classification: Illustrated by Racial/Ethnic Classification in Medical Risk Assessment, with J. Mullahy and A. Venkataramani

 

The Subtlety of Optimal Paternalism in a Population with Bounded Rationality, with E. Sheshinski

 

 

Links to Books

 

C. Manski, Discourse on Social Planning under Uncertainty, Cambridge University Press, 2024.

 

C. Manski, Patient Care under Uncertainty, Princeton University Press, 2019.

 

C. Manski, Public Policy in an Uncertain World: Analysis and Decisions, Harvard University Press, 2013

 

C. Manski, Identification for Prediction and Decision, Harvard University Press, 2007

 

C. Manski, Social Choice with Partial Knowledge of Treatment Response, Princeton University Press, 2005.

 

C. Manski, Partial Identification of Probability Distributions, Springer-Verlag, 2003

 

C. Manski, J. Pepper, and C. Petrie (editors), Informing America's Policy on Illegal Drugs: What We Don't Know Keeps Hurting Us, National Academy Press, 2001 (book can be read online)

 

B. Fischhoff and C. Manski (editors), Elicitation of Preferences, Kluwer, 2000

 

C. Manski, Identification Problems in the Social Sciences, Harvard, 1995

 

C. Manski and I. Garfinkel (editors), Evaluating Welfare and Training Programs, Harvard, 1992

 

C. Manski, Analog Estimation Methods in Econometrics, Chapman & Hall, 1988

(out-of-print book can be downloaded for private use)

 

C. Manski and D. Wise College Choice in America, Harvard, 1983

 

C. Manski and D. McFadden (editors), Structural Analysis of Discrete Data with Econometric Applications, MIT Press, 1981 (out-of-print book can be downloaded for private use)

 

Samuil Manski, With God’s Help, 1990 (book can be downloaded for private use)

 

Courses

 

Economics 483, Introduction to Econometrics, Winter 2026 (Ph.D. field course)

 

Economics 336, Analytical Methods for Public Policy, Winter 2026 (undergraduate elective course)

 

 

The Survey of Economic Expectations

 

SEE Introduction,  SEE Data and Codebooks

ICPSR Data and Documentation