The BBVA Foundation has announced Charles Manski, a professor at Northwestern University, as winner of the 18th edition of the Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Economics, Finance and Management category, for his groundbreaking work in measuring uncertainty in economic research, impacting public policy analysis.

The award committee described Manski as a foundational figure in developing methods that revolutionize how economists analyze data and assess public policies under conditions of uncertainty. His five-decade-long career has notably influenced diverse fields such as education, health policy, and labor markets, advocating for credible and transparent inference from economic data.

About the Frontiers of Knowledge Award

The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Awards, established in 2008, are funded with 400,000 euros in each of eight categories The awards recognize and reward contributions of singular impact in basic sciences. The categories are biomedicine, environmental sciences and climate change, social sciences, economics, the humanities and music. 

A total of 34 Frontiers of Knowledge laureates have gone on to win the Nobel Prize. In particular, fourteen Frontiers of Knowledge Award winners in the Economics, Finance and Management category were subsequently recognized by the Swedish Academy. They are: Lars Peter Hansen (2013), Jean Tirole (2014), Angus Deaton (2015), William Nordhaus (2018), Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo (2019), Paul Milgrom and Robert Wilson (2020), David Card (2021), Ben Bernanke (2022), Claudia Goldin (2023), Daron Acemoglu (2024) and Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt (2025).

The BBVA Foundation is partnered in the awards by the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), the country’s premier public research organization. 

Charles Manski: A leader in the field of Uncertainty in Economics

Charles Manski is a seasoned economist, having gained his undergraduate degree and PhD at MIT. He has worked in the US and Israel as an economics professor, and has been at Northwestern since 1997. He was department chair there from 2007-2010. He has also advised the US government and has served terms on the editorial boards of Journal of Human Resources and the Annual Review of Economics.

Manski’s research extends into various domains, including quantifying the expectations of economic agents. He emphasizes the importance of understanding uncertainty in decision-making, highlighting how predictions can be fragile if based on erroneous assumptions. His work encourages economists to present a range of possible outcomes rather than definitive answers to address the complexities of public policy situations.

His methodologies have found practical applications in education and healthcare, notably advocating for more cautious extrapolation of clinical trial results to broader populations. He aims to incorporate uncertainty measurement into healthcare decisions through tools and applications designed for ease of use, even for those without advanced mathematical knowledge.

Charles Manski has been lauded for his critical contributions towards developing a framework that emphasizes the reality of uncertainty in economic analysis, offering a more nuanced understanding of economic behavior and policy effectiveness.

At the age of 77, Manski combines a busy teaching schedule with his continuing efforts to refine measurement of uncertainty, with the aim of optimizing decision-making based on the best possible evidence, even among non-econometricians. In his own words: 
“I’m currently working on a practical project to turn all these ideas into a web application that even someone without mathematical knowledge can use to optimize decision-making in healthcare or any other field.”

The wide impact of Manski’s work, combined with the precedent of so many Frontiers of Knowledge Award winners going on to become Nobel laureates in economics, positions Prof. Manski as a leading candidate for the Swedish Academy in the near future.

You can read an article about the Charles Manski’s research focus here, or the full press release, which includes a detailed discussion and comments on his research and impact, here.

Image Credits: Copyright ©BBVA Foundation (granted for use on INOMICS, by kind permission of BBVA Foundation)