The Years of High Econometrics : A Short History of the Generation that Reinvented Economics

"The creation of econometrics was the most important transformation in twentieth-century economics and the establishment of the Econometric Society, the Cowles Commission and the journal Econometrica were just three of the events that would shape its development. Taking Ragnar Frisch as the narrator, Francisco Louca presents a comprehensive history of this innovation. Louca includes all the major players in this history from the economists like Wesley Mitchell, Irving Fisher, Joseph Schumpeter and Maynard Keynes to the mathematicians like John von Neumann, as well as the statisticians like Karl Pearson, Jerzy Neyman and R.A. Fisher. He discusses the evolution of their thought, detailing the debates, the quarrels and the interrogations that crystallised their work. Louca even offers a conclusion of sorts, suggesting that some of the founders of econometrics became critical of its later development." "This book will be of great interest to students, academics and researchers alike in the history of economics, not least because it contains archive material that has not been published. It would be a welcome accompaniment to students taking courses on statistics and probability, econometric methods, macroeconometries and the history of economic thought."--BOOK JACKET.

Francisco Louca is Professor of Economics at the ISEG in Lisbon.