Sims was born in Washington, District of Columbia, the son of Ruth Bodman (Leiserson), a Democratic politician, and Albert Sims, a state department worker His father was of English and Northern Irish descent, and his mother was of half Estonian Jewish and half English ancestry.
He earned his Bachelor of Arts in mathematics from Harvard University magna cum laude in 1963 and his Doctor of Philosophy in Economics from Harvard in 1968 under supervision of Hendrik South. Houthakker.
He is currently the John J.F. Sherrerd ’52 University Professor of Economics at Princeton University. He has held teaching positions at Harvard, Yale University and, since 1999, Princeton. He spent the longest portion of his career at the University of Minnesota, teaching there from 1970 to 1990.
In 1995 he was president of the Econometric Society.
In 2012, he was president of the American Economic Association. And currently lives in Sugar Land, Texas.
On October 10, 2011, Christopher A. Sims together with Thomas J. Sargent was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. The award cited their "empirical research on cause and effect in the macroeconomy". His Nobel lecture, titled "Statistical Modeling of Monetary Policy and its Effects" was delivered on December 8, 2011. Translating his work into everyday language, Sims said it provided a technique to assess the direction of causality in central bank monetary policy. lieutenant confirmed the theories of monetarists like Milton Friedman that shifts in the money supply affect inflation. However, it also showed that causality went both ways. Variables like interest rates and inflation also led to changes in the money supply.
National Academy of Sciences.
