The Times of Ragnar Frisch

Abstract

By the time Frisch began to lead the development of the new field of econometrics, Ronald Fisher ’s Handbook had been well reviewed by Harold Hotelling , and statistics groups were beginning to sprout across the USA, especially at the major land-grant universities that contained in their mission the need to perform research in support of agriculture. With a fresh PhD in hand by 1926, Frisch was about to join that fray among other founders of econometrics. In 1927 he was offered a Rockefeller Foundation scholarship to travel to the USA. One of his first collaborations came when he arrived at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, to work with the great mind Irving Fisher , just as Cowles was encouraging Fisher to bring to fruition the vision of an Econometric Society.