Joseph Gerard Altonji (born 1953) is an American economist and the Thomas DeWitt Cuyler Professor of Economics at Yale University.
In 2002, Altonji moved back to Yale University as the Thomas DeWitt Cuyler Professor of Economics, a position he still holds.
In a seminal 1982 paper, he analysed whether aggregate fluctuations in (un-)employment can be explained as intertemporal substitution in labour supply, as hypothesized by e.g. Robert E. Lucas, and found the model to be rejected in the data.
[13] Subsequent work on high school curricula by Altonji found the return to additional courses in academic subjects to be small.
[14] Further research by Altonji on the demand for and return to high school and postsecondary by field of study is reviewed in his survey of the literature (co-authored with Erica Blom and Costas Meghir).
[15] In two studies with Thomas Dunn using the PSID and NLS, Altonji finds that teachers' salary, expenditures per pupil and a composite index of school quality indicators have a substantial positive effect on the wages of U.S. high school graduates,[16] but mixed results regarding whether parental education has a positive impact on children's returns to education.
[20] Another field of research of Altonji is the economic analysis of the family, especially in joint work with Laurence Kotlikoff and Fumio Hayashi as well as with Thomas Dunn.
[26] Another seminal study is due to Altonji and Charles Pierret, who show that if firms statistically discriminate among young workers on the basis of easily observable characteristics, the coefficients on the easily observed variables should fall and the coefficients on hard-to-observe correlates of productivity should rise, as firms learn about workers' productivity.
[34] Further major research by Altonji has addressed small-sample bias in GMM estimation of covariance structures (with Lewis Segal),[35] cross section and panel data estimators for nonseparable models with endogenous regressors (with Rosa Matzkin),[36] and the implications of changes in the characteristics of American youth for adult outcomes (with Prashant Bharadwaj and Fabian Lange).