Ragnar Frisch
Ragnar Anton Kittil Frisch (3 March 1895 – 31 January 1973) was an influential Norwegian economist known for being one of the major contributors to establishing economics as a quantitative and statistically informed science in the early 20th century. He coined the term econometrics in 1926 for utilising statistical methods to describe economic systems, as well as the terms microeconomics and macroeconomics in 1933, for describing individual and aggregate economic systems, respectively.[2][3][4][5] He was the first to develop a statistically informed model of business cycles in 1933. Later work on the model, together with Jan Tinbergen, won the first Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1969.[6]
Ragnar Frisch
Norwegian
Frisch became dr.philos. with a thesis on mathematics and statistics at the University of Oslo in 1926. After his doctoral thesis, he spent five years researching in the United States at the University of Minnesota and Yale University.[4] After teaching briefly at Yale from 1930–31, he was offered a full professorship in economics, which he declined after pressures by colleagues to return to the University of Oslo. After returning to Oslo, Frisch was first appointed by the King-in-Council as Professor of Economics and Statistics at the Faculty of Law, University of Oslo (then the Royal Frederick University) in 1931, before becoming leader of the newly founded Institute of Economics at the University of Oslo in 1932.[3][7] He remained at the University of Oslo until his retirement in 1965.
Frisch was one of the founders of the Econometric Society in 1930, and edited the journal Econometrica for its first 21 years.[2]
Ragnar Frisch has given name to the Frisch Medal, which is awarded every year by the Econometric Society for the best paper in econometrics published in the last five years, as well as the Frisch-centre for Applied Economic Analysis at the University of Oslo.[8][9] The Grand Auditorium at the Institute of Economics, University of Oslo also bears his name.[10]
Work[edit]
Frisch was one of the founders of economics as a modern science. He made a number of significant advances in the field of economics and coined a number of new words including econometrics and macroeconomics. His 1926 paper on consumer theory helped set up Neo-Walrasian research. He formalized production theory, especially in addressing nonallocable inputs leading to jointness, meaning less than full control, in production processes (see esp. Chapters 14 and 15).[22]
In econometrics he worked on time series (1927) and linear regression analysis (1934). With Frederick V. Waugh, he introduced the celebrated Frisch–Waugh theorem (Econometrica 1933) (sometimes referred to as the Frisch–Waugh–Lovell theorem). In oligopoly theory he developed the conjectural variation approach. Frisch also is credited with introducing the term "model" in its modern economic sense by Paul Samuelson, based on a 1930 Yale University lecture.[23]
His 1933 work on impulse-propagation business cycles became one of the principles of modern New Classical business cycle theory. He also helped introduce econometric modeling to government economic planning and accounting.
He was one of the founders of the Econometric Society and editor of Econometrica for over twenty years. The Frisch Medal, so named in his honor, is given every two years for the best paper published in the aforementioned Econometrica in the previous five years.
Frisch's most important hobby was bee-keeping, for which Frisch performed genetic studies.[24]
There is a bibliography of Frisch's writings up to 1960 in
and there is a collection of selected essays