Daniel L. McFadden
Facts
Photo from the Nobel Foundation archive.
Daniel L. McFadden
The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2000
Born: 29 July 1937, Raleigh, NC, USA
Affiliation at the time of the award: University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA
Prize motivation: “for his development of theory and methods for analyzing discrete choice”
Prize share: 1/2
Life
Daniel McFadden was born in North Carolina, USA. He grew up on a rural farm where neighbors were remote and reading was the primary recreation. After studying physics and economics at the University of Minnesota, McFadden taught economics at a number of institutions, like Berkley, Yale and MIT. In 1990, he returned to Berkley.
Work
Daniel McFadden’s work combines economic theory, statistical methods and empirical applications toward the resolution of social problems. In the 1970s, he developed conditional logit analysis – a method for determining how individuals choose between finite alternatives to maximize their utility. For example, his work helped predict usage rates for public transportation systems.
Streams during Nobel Week
