Econometrics is the application of statistical methods to economic data in order to give empirical content to economic relationships. More precisely, it is "the quantitative analysis of actual economic phenomena based on the concurrent development of theory and observation, related by appropriate methods of inference". An introductory economics textbook describes econometrics as allowing economists "to sift through mountains of data to extract simple relationships". The first known use of the term "econometrics" was by Polish economist Paweł Ciompa in 1910. Jan Tinbergen is considered by many to be one of the founding fathers of econometrics. Ragnar Frisch is credited with coining the term in the sense in which it is used today.
Jan Tinbergen was an important Dutch economist. He was awarded the first Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1969, which he shared with Ragnar Frisch for having developed and applied dynamic models for the analysis of economic processes. He is widely considered to be one of the most influential economists of the 20th century and one of the founding fathers of econometrics. It has been argued that the development of the first macroeconometric models, the solution of the identification problem, and the understanding of dynamic models are his three most important legacies to econometrics. Tinbergen was a founding trustee of Economists for Peace and Security. In 1945, he founded the Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis (CPB) and was the agency's first director.
Sir John Hicks was a British economist. He was considered one of the most important and influential economists of the twentieth century. The most familiar of his many contributions in the field of economics were his statement of consumer demand theory in microeconomics, and the IS–LM model (1937), which summarised a Keynesian view of macroeconomics. His book Value and Capital (1939) significantly extended general-equilibrium and value theory. The compensated demand function is named the Hicksian demand function in memory of him.
Lawrence Robert Klein was an American economist. For his work in creating computer models to forecast economic trends in the field of econometrics in the Department of Economics at the University of Pennsylvania, he was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1980 specifically "for the creation of econometric models and their application to the analysis of economic fluctuations and economic policies." Due to his efforts, such models have become widespread among economists. Harvard University professor Martin Feldstein told the Wall Street Journal that Klein "was the first to create the statistical models that embodied Keynesian economics," tools still used by the Federal Reserve Bank and other central banks.
Tjalling Charles Koopmans was a Dutch American mathematician and economist. He was the joint winner with Leonid Kantorovich of the 1975 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his work on the theory of the optimum allocation of resources. Koopmans showed that on the basis of certain efficiency criteria, it is possible to make important deductions concerning optimum price systems.
Erasmus University Rotterdam is a public university located in Rotterdam, Netherlands. The university is named after Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus, a 15th-century humanist and theologian.
Omicron Delta Epsilon is an international honor society in the field of economics, formed from the merger of Omicron Delta Gamma and Omicron Chi Epsilon, in 1963. Its board of trustees includes well-known economists such as Robert Lucas, Richard Thaler, and Robert Solow. ODE is a member of the Association of College Honor Societies; the ACHS indicates that ODE inducts approximately 4,000 collegiate members each year and has more than 100,000 living lifetime members. There are approximately 700 active ODE chapters worldwide. New members consist of undergraduate and graduate students, as well as college and university faculty; the academic achievement required to obtain membership for students can be raised by individual chapters, as well as the ability to run for office or wear honors cords during graduation. It publishes an academic journal entitled The American Economist twice each year.
Hans-Werner Sinn is a German economist and was President of the Ifo Institute for Economic Research from 1999 to 2016. He serves on the German economy ministry’s advisory council. He is Professor Emeritus of Economics and Public Finance at the University of Munich.
Foundation for European Economic Development (FEED) is a charity formed in November 1990 under the auspices of the European Association for Evolutionary Political Economy. The charity is formally registered under the Charities Act 2006. It has provided financial assistance for various projects and organisations, including research prize competitions, summer schools, conferences, and other research events.
The pluralism in economics movement is a campaign to change the teaching and research in economics towards more openness in its approaches, topics and standpoints it considers. The goal of the movement is to "...reinvigorate the discipline ... [and bring] economics back into the service of society". Some have argued that economics had greater scientific pluralism in the past compared to the monist approach that is prevalent today. Pluralism encourages the inclusion of a wide variety of neoclassical and heterodox economic theories—including classical, Post-Keynesian, institutional, ecological, evolutionary, feminist, Marxist, and Austrian economics, stating that "each tradition of thought adds something unique and valuable to economic scholarship".
The European Economic Association (EEA) is a professional academic body which links European economists. It was founded in the mid-1980s. Its first annual congress was in 1986 in Vienna and its first president was Jacques Drèze. The current president is Eliana La Ferrara. The Association currently has around 3000 members. Its objectives are:
".. . to contribute to the development and application of economics as a science in Europe; to improve communication and exchange between teachers, researchers and students in economics in the different European countries; and to develop and sponsor co-operation between teaching institutions of university level and research institutions in Europe "
The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, is an economics prize administered by the Nobel Foundation and generally regarded as the Nobel award of Economics. The prize was established in 1968 by a donation from Sweden's central bank Sveriges Riksbank to the Nobel Foundation to commemorate the bank's 300th anniversary. As it is not one of the prizes that Alfred Nobel established in his will in 1895, it is not a Nobel Prize. However, it is administered and referred to along with the Nobel Prizes by the Nobel Foundation. Laureates are announced with the Nobel Prize laureates, and receive the award at the same ceremony.
The Yrjö Jahnsson Foundation is a charitable foundation whose aims are to promote Finnish research in economics and medicine and to maintain and support educational and research facilities in Finland. It was established in 1954 by the wife of Yrjö Jahnsson, Hilma Jahnsson. It supports the award of the Yrjö Jahnsson Award and Yrjö Jahnsson Lecture series. These lectures have been delivered by noteworthy economists since 1963. 10 of the Yrjö Jahnsson Lecture series scholars have gone on to win the Nobel prize in economics, making it a top predictor for future recipients.
Mário José Gomes de Freitas Centeno is a Portuguese economist, university professor, and politician. Since 2015, he has been Minister of Finance in the government of Prime Minister António Costa of Portugal. He was the president of the Eurogroup and Chairman of the Board of Governors of the European Stability Mechanism from 2018 to 2020. Previously, he was a board member economist of the Bank of Portugal. On 9 June 2020, he announced his resignation from the Ministry of Finance, effective 15 June.
Nava Ashraf is a Canadian economist and currently serves as professor of economics at the London School of Economics as well as research director of the Marshall Institute for Philanthropy and Social Entrepreneurship. Her research interests include development economics, behavioral economics, and family economics.
Eliana La Ferrara is an Italian economist who holds the Fondazione Romeo ed Enrica Invernizzi Chair in Development Economics at Bocconi University, where she also acts as Scientific Director of the Laboratory for Effective Anti-poverty Programs (LEAP). Previously, she was also the president of the Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development (BREAD) as well as the president of the European Economic Association. In terms of research, her fields of interest include development economics, political economy, and public economics.
Georg Heinrich von Weizsäcker is a German economist and currently the Professor for Microeconomic Theory and Applications at the Humboldt University of Berlin. His research interests include microeconomics, experimental economics, financial decision making, game theory and decision theory. In 2017, Weizsäcker's contributions to a better understanding of expectations formation and decisions under uncertainty were awarded the Gossen Prize.
Uwe Sunde is a German economist and currently Professor of Economics at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (LMU) as well as a Research Professor in the ifo Center for Labour and Demographic Economics. Sunde's research interests include long-term development and growth, political economy, labour economics, population economics, and behavioural economics. In 2015, his research on risk preferences and on the role of life expectancy and human capital for long-term economic development earned him the Gossen Prize.
Giorgio Brunello is an Italian economist and Professor of Economics at the University of Padova. His research interests include education, migration, training, unemployment and wages. He ranks among the foremost labour economists in Italy.
Jan C. van Ours is a Dutch economist and currently Professor of Applied Economics at the Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR). He belongs to the most highly cited economists in the Netherlands and is the 1996 winner of the Hicks-Tinbergen Award.
