Charles
F. Manski
Curriculum
Vitae
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.’ ”
Forthcoming
Articles
Accounting
for Nonresponse in Election Polls: Total Margin of Error, with J. Dominitz, Journal
of the American Statistical Association, forthcoming.
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
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
What is the General Welfare?: Welfare
Economic Perspectives on Equity
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
STATEMENT
TO RESTORE SCIENCE-BASED POLICY IN GOVERNMENT, By
Concerned Members of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, April 2018
Link
to NAS Open Letter History statement,
July 2020