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William Dickens

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William Theodore Dickens
Born (1953-12-31) December 31, 1953 (age 72)
Academic background
EducationBard College (B.A., 1976), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Ph.D., 1981)
Academic work
DisciplineLabor economics
InstitutionsNortheastern University

William Theodore Dickens (born December 31, 1953)[1] is an American economist. He is a University Distinguished Professor of Economics and Social Policy at Northeastern University.

Career

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Dickens was on the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley from 1980 until 1995. While on leave he served as a senior economist with the President of the United States' Council of Economic Advisers, in 1993-94 where he worked for Laura Tyson.[2][3][4] He was a Faculty Research Fellow and then a Research Associate with the National Bureau of Economic Research from 1982 to 1998. He was a senior fellow in Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution from 1995 to 2007, where he was a visiting fellow from 1994 to 1995 and a non resident senior fellow from 2007 to 2016.[2] In 2007, he became Thomas C. Schelling Visiting professor at the University of Maryland, a position he held until joining Northeastern in June 2008.[5] He subsequently served as a Russell Sage Foundation Visiting Scholar for one year.[2] He was chair of the Department of Economics at Northeastern from 2013 to 2018.

Research

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Dickens' research interests include unemployment,[6][7] race and intelligence,[8][9] and changes in IQ over time (the Flynn effect).[10] For example, he co-authored a 2006 study with James Flynn[11] showing that the black-white IQ gap in the United States had decreased in size by at least 25% between 1972 and 2002.[8][12] He and Flynn had previously proposed a hypothesis for why IQ appears to be both highly heritable and significantly affected by the environment. Their hypothesis argued that individual's IQs are significantly affected by both genes and environment, but that people's environments change in response to their IQs.[13][14] Dickens has also worked with Nobel prize winner George Akerlof. Together they authored the 1982 paper "The Economic Consequences of Cognitive Dissonance".[15] Scholars have described the Akerlof–Dickens model of cognitive dissonance as an influential early template for integrating psychological mechanisms into formal economic theory.[16][17] Akerlof and Dickens also wrote two papers on inflation and unemployment [18][19] in which they argued that psychological considerations lead to a long-run Phillips curve where there is a trade-off between inflation and unemployment.

References

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  1. ↑ "William T. Dickens". Name Authority File. Library of Congress. Retrieved 14 June 2017.
  2. 1 2 3 "William T. Dickens Curriculum Vitae" (PDF). Brookings Institution. Retrieved 14 June 2017.
  3. ↑ Maclay, Kathleen (16 August 2000). "Economist to help Justice Department analyze mergers, competition". The Berkeleyan. University of California, Berkeley. Retrieved 14 June 2017.
  4. ↑ Peterson, Jonathan (21 August 1994). "West Coast Economists Forge Axis With D.C." Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 14 June 2017.
  5. ↑ "Renowned Economics Scholar William T. Dickens Appointed to Northeastern University Faculty". News@Northeastern. Northeastern University. 7 July 2008. Retrieved 14 June 2017.
  6. ↑ Foreman, Tom (2 August 2013). "7%-plus: The new abnormal". CNN. Retrieved 14 June 2017.
  7. ↑ O'Brien, Matthew (12 December 2012). "I Can't Stop Looking at These Terrifying Long-Term Unemployment Charts". The Atlantic. Retrieved 14 June 2017.
  8. 1 2 Morin, Richard (9 August 2006). "Analysis Shows 'IQ Gap' Closing". The Washington Post. Retrieved 14 June 2017.
  9. ↑ Gellene, Denise (22 June 2007). "Firstborn children found to have higher intelligence". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 14 June 2017.
  10. ↑ Johnson, Steven (1 May 2005). "Dome Improvement". Wired. Retrieved 14 June 2017.
  11. ↑ Dickens, William T.; Flynn, James R. (October 2006). "Black Americans Reduce the Racial IQ Gap". Psychological Science. 17 (10): 913–920. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2006.01802.x. PMID 17100793. S2CID 6593169.
  12. ↑ Viadero, Debra (21 June 2006). "Black-White Gap in IQ Scores Closing, Study Finds". Edweek. Retrieved 14 June 2017.
  13. ↑ Begley, Sharon (22 April 2001). "Are We Getting Smarter?". Newsweek. 137 (17): 50–51. PMID 11338628. Retrieved 14 June 2017.
  14. ↑ Dickens, William; Flynn, James (2001). "Heritability estimates vs. large environmental effects: the IQ paradox resolved". Psychological Review. Retrieved 16 December 2020.
  15. ↑ Akerlof, Dickens, George, William (1982). "The Economic Consequences of Cognitive Dissonance". American Economic Review. 72 (3): 307–319 – via JSTOR.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  16. ↑ Angner, Erik (2016), "Cognitive Dissonance in Chapter 5", A Course in Behavioral Economics, 3rd edition, London: Macmillan Education UK, pp. 71–72, ISBN 978-1-137-51292-5, retrieved 2026-04-16
  17. ↑ Rabin, Matthew (1998). "Psychology and Economics". Journal of Economic Literature. 36 (1): 11–46 – via JSTOR.
  18. ↑ Akerlof, George A.; Dickens, William T.; Perry, George L.; Gordon, Robert J.; Mankiw, N. Gregory (1996). "The Macroeconomics of Low Inflation". Brookings Papers on Economic Activity. 1996 (1): 1. doi:10.2307/2534646. ISSN 0007-2303.
  19. ↑ Akerlof, Dickens, Perry, George, William, George (2000). "Near-Rational Wage and Price Setting and the Long-Run Phillips Curve" (PDF). Brookings Papers on Economic Activity. 2000 (1): 1–60 – via Brookings.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
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