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

Northeastern University Northeastern University (NU) is a private research university with its main campus in Boston. Established in 1898, the university offers undergraduate and graduate programs on its main campus as well as satellite campuses in Charlotte, North Ca ...

Career

Dickens was on the faculty of the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant un ...

from 1980 until 1995. While on leave he served as a senior economist with the President of the United States'

Council of Economic Advisers The Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) is a United States agency within the Executive Office of the President established in 1946, which advises the President of the United States on economic policy. The CEA provides much of the empirical rese ...

, in 1993-94 where he worked for

Laura Tyson Laura D'Andrea Tyson (born June 28, 1947) is an American economist and university administrator who is currently a Distinguished Professor of the Graduate School at the Haas School of Business of the University of California, Berkeley and a senio ...

. He was a Faculty Research Fellow and then a Research Associate with the

National Bureau of Economic Research The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) is an American private nonprofit research organization "committed to undertaking and disseminating unbiased economic research among public policymakers, business professionals, and the academic c ...

from 1982 to 1998. He was a senior fellow in Economic Studies at the

Brookings Institution The Brookings Institution, often stylized as simply Brookings, is an American research group founded in 1916. Located on Think Tank Row in Washington, D.C., the organization conducts research and education in the social sciences, primarily in e ...

from 1995 to 2007, where he was a visiting fellow from 1994 to 1995 and a non resident senior fellow from 2007-2016. In 2007, he became Thomas C. Schelling Visiting Professor at the

University of Maryland The University of Maryland, College Park (University of Maryland, UMD, or simply Maryland) is a public land-grant research university in College Park, Maryland. Founded in 1856, UMD is the flagship institution of the University System of ...

, a position he held until joining Northeastern in June 2008. He subsequently served as a

Russell Sage Foundation The Russell Sage Foundation is an American non-profit organisation established by Margaret Olivia Sage in 1907 for “the improvement of social and living conditions in the United States.” It was named after her recently deceased husband, rai ...

Visiting Scholar for one year. He was chair of the Department of Economics at Northeastern from 2013-2018.

Research

Dickens' research interests include

unemployment Unemployment, according to the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), is people above a specified age (usually 15) not being in paid employment or self-employment but currently available for work during the refe ...

race and intelligence Discussions of race and intelligence – specifically, claims of differences in intelligence along racial lines – have appeared in both popular science and academic research since the modern concept of race was first introduced. With the inc ...

, and changes in IQ over time (the

Flynn effect The Flynn effect is the substantial and long-sustained increase in both fluid and crystallized intelligence test scores that were measured in many parts of the world over the 20th century. When intelligence quotient (IQ) tests are initially stand ...

). For example, he co-authored a 2006 study with James Flynn showing that the black-white IQ gap in the United States had decreased in size by at least 25% between 1972 and 2002. 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.

References

External links

Faculty page
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Dickens, William T. 1953 births Living people 21st-century American economists Bard College alumni Labor economists Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni Northeastern University faculty Race and intelligence controversy University of California, Berkeley College of Letters and Science faculty University of Maryland, College Park faculty