Welcome to my blog, Economics in the Rear-View Mirror. If you find this posting interesting, here is the complete list of “artifacts” from the history of economics I have assembled for you to sample or click on the search icon in the upper right to explore by name, university, or category. You can subscribe to my blog below. There is also an opportunity to comment following each posting….
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Robert Solow’s name is typically associated with neo-classical growth theory and MIT macroeconomics of the Keynesian persuasion. This posting reminds us that he was originally hired to beef up the statistics instruction in the MIT economics department. Like his Harvard professor Wassily Leontief, his theoretical work never really left the gravitational field of empirical economics.
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14.382 Economic Statistics (A)
Prereq.: 14.371T [Statistical Method]
Year: G(2) 3-0-6
Study of selected statistical techniques found useful in recent economic work, especially the regression analysis of economic time series.
Solow
Source: The Massachusetts Institute of Technology Bulletin 1959-1960. General Catalogue Issue, p. 248.
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COURSE OUTLINE
14.382
[Economic Statistics, Robert M. Solow]
Spring Semester, 1960
I. AGGREGATION AND INDEX NUMBERS (3 weeks)
A. Aggregation
R. G. D. Allen, Mathematical Economics, Chapter 20.
Stedman B. Noble, “Structure and Classification in Resource Flow Models”, George Washington University Logistics Research Project, May 1959.
____________________, “Resource Flow Models with Application”, delivered to the Econometric Society, December 1959.
Zvi Griliches and Y. Grunfeld, “Is Aggregation Necessarily Bad?”, The Review of Economics and Statistics, forthcoming.
E. Malinvaud, “L’agrégation dan les Modéles Économique”, Cahiers du Séminaire d’Économetrie, No. 4, 1956, pp. 69-143.
B. Index Numbers
Kenneth J. Arrow, “The Measurement of Price Change”, The Relation of Prices to Economic Stability and Growth, Joint Economic Committee Compendium, March 1958.
C. S. Carter, W. B. Reddaway and R. Stone, The Measurement of Production Movements, Cambridge University Press: England, 1948.
Federal Reserve Bulletin, “Revised Industrial Production Index”, December 1959, pp. 1451-1466.
II. ESTIMATION TECHNIQUES (4 weeks)
A. Small Sample Properties of Simultaneous Equation Estimators
Robert L. Basmann, “An Experimental Investigation of Some Small Sample Properties of (GCL) Estimators of Structural Equations”, November 1958 (dittoed).
_____________________, “On Finite Sample Distributions of Identifiability Test Statistics”, March 1959 (dittoed).
Harvey M. Wagner, “A Monte Carlo Study of Estimates of Simultaneous Linear Equations”, Econometrica, Vol. 26, 1958, pp. 117-133.
Robert Summers, “Capital-Intensive Approach to the Small Sample Properties of Various Simultaneous Linear Equation Estimators”, 1958 (unpublished).
Richard J. Foote, “An Experiment to Test the Relative Merits of Least Squares and Limited Information Coefficients for Forecasting Under Specified Conditions”, Analytical Tools for Studying Demand and Price Structures, 1958, pp. 128-42.
B. Specification
G. E. P. Box and Norman Draper, “A Basis for Selection of a Response Surface Design”, Journal of the American Statistical Association, September 1959.
Henry Scheffe, The Analysis of Variance, “The Effects of Departures from Underlying Assumptions”, Chapter 10, 1959.
Hans Theil, Economic Forecasts and Policy, Chapter 6.2, pp. 204-39, “Statistical Methodology”, and Appendix 6B, “Analysis of Specification Errors”, pp. 326-33.
III. MEASUREMENT OF SUPPLY, COST, AND PRODUCTION FUNCTIONS (3 weeks)
Robert M. Solow, “Technical Change and the Aggregate Production Function”, The Review of Economics and Statistics, August 1957.
Luigi Pasinetti, “On Concepts and Measures of Changes in Productivit” and Comment by R. Solow, Review of Economics and Statistics, August 1959, pp. 270-86.
Jack Johnston, “Statistical Cost Functions: Reappraisal”, Review of Economics and Statistics, 1958.
Zvi Griliches, “Hybrid Corn: And Exploration in the Economics of Technical Change,” Econometrica, October 1957, pp. 501-22.
Paul H. Douglas, “Are There Laws of Production?”, American Economic Review, March 1948, pp. 1-41.
Irving Hoch, “Simultaneous Equation Bias in the Context of the Cobb-Douglas Production Function”, Econometrica, October 1958, pp. 566-78.
John R. Meyer, M. J. Peck and others, The Economics of Competition in the Transportation Industries, Harvard University Press: Cambridge, 1959.
Lawrence R. Klien, Econometrics, “A Cross-Section Model of Production of Railway Services”, Chapter 5, Section 4, pp. 226-41.
Hollis Chenery, “Engineering Production Functions”, Quarterly Journal of Economics, November 1949.
Kenneth J. Arrow, Marvin Hoffenberg, A Time Series Analysis of Inter-industry Demands, The RAND Corporation, North-Holland Publishing Co.: Amsterdam, 1959.
Hollis Chenery and Paul G. Clark, Interindustry Economics, 1959.
IV. MACRO MODELS AND DECISION THEORY (5 weeks)
Hans Theil, Chapter 3, “Postwar Macro Economic Forecasts in the Netherlands and Scandinavia,” Chapter 5, “Underestimation of Changes,” pp. 154-183, Chapter 7, “Forecasts and Policy: Problems and Tools,” pp. 379-410, Chapter 8, “Underestimation of Changes: Analysis and Implications,” pp. 411-529.
James Duesenberry, Quarterly Model of U.S. Economy.
New Klein Model, Suits-Klein-Goldberger Model.
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Source: Robert Solow papers. Box 68, Folder “Reading lists”, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University.
Image Source: MIT Museum.