Ragnar Anton Kittil Frisch (3 March 1895 – 31 January 1973) was an influentialNorwegianeconomist andeconometrician 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 termeconometrics in 1926 for utilising statistical methods to describe economic systems, as well as the termsmicroeconomics andmacroeconomics 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 withJan Tinbergen, won the firstNobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1969.[6]
Frisch becamedr.philos. with a thesis on mathematics and statistics at theUniversity of Oslo in 1926. After his doctoral thesis, he spent five years researching in the United States at theUniversity of Minnesota andYale 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 theKing-in-Council as Professor of Economics and Statistics at theFaculty of Law, University of Oslo (then theRoyal 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 theEconometric Society in 1930, and edited the journalEconometrica for its first 21 years.[2] He has given name to theFrisch Medal, which is awarded every year by theEconometric 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]
Ragnar Frisch's father, Anton Frisch (1865–1928), goldsmith in Oslo, and a member of theFrisch family of silver miners and goldsmiths
Ragnar Frisch[11] was born on 3 March 1895 inChristiania as the son ofgold- andsilversmith Anton Frisch and Ragna Fredrikke Frisch (née Kittilsen). TheFrisch family had emigrated from Germany toKongsberg in Norway in the 17th century and his ancestors had worked for theKongsberg Silver Mines for generations;[12] Ragnar's grandfather Antonius Frisch had become a goldsmith in Christiania in 1856. His family had thus worked with precious metals like silver and gold for at least 300 years.
Being expected to continue his family business, Frisch became anapprentice in the David Andersen workshop in Oslo. However at his mother's advice, while doing his apprenticeship Frisch also started studying at theRoyal Frederick University. His chosen topic was economics, as it seemed to be "the shortest and easiest study" available at the university,[11] and passed his degree in 1919. In 1920 he also passed his handicraftsman tests and became a partner in his father's workshop.
In 1921 Frisch received a fellowship from the university which enabled him to spend three years studying economics and mathematics inFrance andEngland. After his return toNorway, in 1923, although the family's business was having difficulties, he continued his scientific activity, believing that research, not jewellery, was his real calling.[13] He published a few papers aboutprobability theory, started teaching at the University of Oslo during 1925 and, in 1926, he obtained the Dr. Philos. degree with a thesis inmathematical statistics.
Also in 1926, Frisch published an article[14] outlining his view that economics should follow the same path towards theoretical and empirical quantization that other sciences, especially physics, had followed. During the same year, he published his seminal article "Sur un problème d'économie pure" starting the implementation of his own quantization programme. The article offered theoretical axiomatizations which result in a precise specification of bothordinal andcardinal utility, followed by an empirical estimation of the cardinal specification. Frisch also started lecturing a course onproduction theory, introducing a mathematization of the subject.
Although his fellowship was extended to travel toItaly and France, the next year Frisch had to return to Norway because of his father's death. He spent one year to modernize and recapitalize his family's workshop by selling family assets and to find a jeweller to manage the business for him. Then he resumed academic work, in 1928 being appointed Associate Professor of statistics and economics at the Oslo University. During 1927 and 1928 Frisch published a series of articles on the statistics of time series. In 1929 he published his first important essay on econometric methodology, "Correlation and scatter in statistical variables",[15] followed in the same year by "Statics and dynamics in economic theory", which introduced dynamics in economic analysis.[16]
Frisch became a full Professor at the university in 1931. He also founded at the university the Rockefeller-funded Institute of Economics in 1932 and became its Director of Research.
Frisch married Marie Smedal in 1920 and they had a daughter, Ragna (b. 1938[22]). His granddaughter,Nadia Hasnaoui (Ragna's child), became a Norwegian television performer. After his first wife died in 1952, he remarried in 1953 with childhood friend Astrid Johannessen.[11] who died in 1980.
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 includingeconometrics andmacroeconomics. His 1926 paper on consumer theory helped set upNeo-Walrasian research. He formalizedproduction theory, especially in addressing nonallocable inputs leading to jointness, meaning less than full control, in production processes (see esp. Chapters 14 and 15).[23]
In econometrics he worked on time series (1927) and linear regression analysis (1934). WithFrederick V. Waugh, he introduced the celebratedFrisch–Waugh theorem (Econometrica 1933) (sometimes referred to as theFrisch–Waugh–Lovell theorem). Inoligopoly theory he developed theconjectural 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.[24]
His 1933 work on impulse-propagation business cycles became one of the principles of modernNew Classicalbusiness cycle theory. He also helped introduce econometric modeling to government economic planning and accounting.
He was one of the founders of theEconometric Society and editor ofEconometrica for over twenty years. TheFrisch Medal, so named in his honor, is given every two years for the best paper published in the aforementionedEconometrica in the previous five years.
Frisch's most important hobby was bee-keeping, for which Frisch performed genetic studies.[25]
Frisch, Ragnar (1926). "Kvantitativ formulering av den teoretiske økonomikks lover [Quantitative formulation of the laws of economic theory]".Statsøkonomisk Tidsskrift.40:299–334.
Frisch, Ragnar (1926). "Sur un problème d'économie pure [On a problem in pure economics]".Norsk Matematisk Forenings Skrifter, Oslo.1 (16):1–40.
Frisch, Ragnar (1927). "Sammenhengen mellem primærinvestering og reinvestering [The relationship between primary investment and reinvestment]".Statsøkonomisk Tidsskrift.41:117–152.
Frisch, Ragnar (1929). "Correlation and scatter in statistical variables".Nordic Statistical Journal.1:36–102.
Frisch, Ragnar (1929). "Statikk og dynamikk i den økonomiske teori [Statics and dynamics in economic theory]".Nationaløkonomisk Tidsskrift.67:321–379.
Frisch, Ragnar (1933). "Propagation problems and impulse problems in dynamic economics".Economic Essays in Honour of Gustav Cassel:171–205.
Frisch, Ragnar (1933).Pitfalls in the Statistical Construction of Demand and Supply Curves. Leipzig: Hans Buske.[26]
There is a bibliography of Frisch's writings up to 1960 in
^Huhnhäuser, Alfred (1944).Die deutsche Einwanderung in Kongsberg. Beiträge zur Geschichte des Deutschtums in Norwegen.Oslo.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
^abOlav Bjerkholt (2000), "A turning point in the development of Norwegian economics – the establishment of the University Institute of Economics in 1932". Memorandum No 36/2000, University of Oslo
^"Quantitative formulation of the laws of economic theory" (see Selected Publications)
^J.W. (1931). "Frisch (Ragnar): Correlation and Scatter in Statistical Variables".Journal of the Royal Statistical Society.94 (1):95–98.doi:10.2307/2341822.JSTOR2341822.
Strøm, Steinar, ed. (1998). "Ragnar Frisch and his Contributions to Economics".Econometrics and Economic Theory in the 20th Century. New York: Cambridge University Press. pp. 3–108.ISBN978-0521633659.
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