PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Halbert White

Halbert White was an economist whose research covered econometrics and artificial neural networks. He graduated from Princeton in 1972, earned an economics PhD from MIT in 1976, and began teaching at UC San Diego in 1979. His work included robust standard errors, neural-network prediction of IBM stock returns, feedforward-network approximation, and conditional-quantile estimation. He co-founded Bates White Economic Consulting in 1999 and was UC San Diego’s Chancellor’s Associates Distinguished Professor of Economics when he died in 2012.

Timeline

  1. 1972–1979

    Economics degrees and UC San Diego

    He graduates from Princeton with a BA in economics in 1972, earning valedictorian honors. He earns an economics PhD from MIT in 1976. After a faculty post at the University of Rochester, he begins teaching at UC San Diego in 1979.

  2. 1980

    White standard errors

    In 1980, his Econometrica paper introduces White’s approach to standard errors and a related test for heteroskedasticity. The methods become standard in software for regression analysis.

  3. 1988

    Neural-network stock prediction

    In 1988, he publishes “Economic Prediction Using Neural Networks: The Case of IBM Daily Stock Returns,” a University of California economics discussion paper.

  4. 1989

    Universal approximation paper

    With Kurt Hornik and Maxwell B. Stinchcombe, he coauthors “Multilayer feedforward networks are universal approximators,” a Neural Networks paper published in 1989.

  5. 1991–1992

    Mappings and neural quantiles

    In 1991, he coauthors a NASA conference paper on neural-network representation and learning of mappings and their derivatives. In 1992, he establishes consistency of nonparametric conditional-quantile estimators based on artificial neural networks.

  6. 1999

    Founding Bates White

    In 1999, he co-founds Bates White, an economic consulting firm.

  7. 2012

    Chancellor’s Associates professor

    White dies on March 31, 2012, at 61 while serving as UC San Diego’s Chancellor’s Associates Distinguished Professor of Economics.

  1. Google had the most people shaping AI every year from 2014 to 2025Our estimates of which organizations employed the most people shaping AI from 1961 to 2025, with a year-by-year chart.
  2. The United States employs an estimated 53% of people in our data with a known employment countryOur estimates of where AI careers are concentrated now and how countries’ shares of dated positions changed over time.
  3. 46% of living people in our data with known birth and employment countries work outside their birth countryOur estimate of cross-border careers in AI, from country of birth and the country of each current organization.
  4. More people shaping AI studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology than at any other institutionOur estimates of where the people shaping AI studied and where their careers led, from education records in cited biographies.

Sources and credits

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  1. UC San Diego Economist Halbert White Dies at Age 61 today.ucsd.edu. Checked 19 October 2026.
  2. Halbert White - Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org. Checked 19 October 2026.
  3. Economic Prediction Using Neural Networks: The Case of IBM Daily Stock Returns books.google.com. Checked 19 October 2026.
  4. Multilayer feedforward networks are universal approximators cs.utexas.edu. Checked 19 October 2026.
  5. Neural network representation and learning of mappings and their derivatives ntrs.nasa.gov. Checked 19 October 2026.
  6. Nonparametric Estimation of Conditional Quantiles Using Neural Networks ideas.repec.org. Checked 19 October 2026.