Trygve Magnus Haavelmo | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | (1911-12-13)13 December 1911 |
| Died | 26 July 1999(1999-07-26) (aged 87) |
| Academic background | |
| Alma mater | University of Oslo |
| Influences | John Maynard Keynes Ragnar Frisch Jan Tinbergen |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline | Macroeconomics,econometrics |
| School or tradition | Neo-Keynesian economics |
| Institutions | University of Aarhus University of Chicago University of Oslo University College London |
| Notable ideas | Probability approach in econometrics Balanced budget multiplier |
| Awards | Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (1989) |
| Website | |
Trygve Magnus Haavelmo (13 December 1911 – 28 July 1999), born inSkedsmo,Norway, was aneconomist whose research interests centered oneconometrics. He received theNobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1989.
After attendingOslo Cathedral School,[1] Haavelmo received a degree ineconomics from the University of Oslo in 1930 and eventually joined the Institute of Economics with the recommendation ofRagnar Frisch. Haavelmo was Frisch's assistant for a period of time until he was appointed as head of computations for the institute. In 1936, Haavelmo studied statistics atUniversity College London while he subsequently traveled to Berlin, Geneva, and Oxford for additional studies.[2] Haavelmo assumed a lecturing position at the University of Aarhus in 1938 for one year and then in the subsequent year was offered an academic scholarship to travel abroad and study in the United States. During World War II he worked withNortraship in the Statistical Department in New York City. He received his PhD in 1946 from Oslo University[3] for his work onThe Probability Approach in Econometrics which he had completed while at Harvard in 1941.[4][5]He was a professor of economics and statistics at theUniversity of Oslo between 1948–79 and was the trade department head of division from 1947 to 1948.[6]
In 1989, Haavelmo was awarded theNobel Prize in Economics "for his clarification of theprobability theory foundations of econometrics and his analyses of simultaneous economic structures."[7]
Haavelmo resided at Østerås inBærum.[8] He died on 28 July 1999 in Oslo.[9]
Judea Pearl wrote "Haavelmo was the first to recognize the capacity of economic models to guide policies" and "presented a mathematical procedure that takes an arbitrary model and produces quantitative answers to policy questions". According to Pearl, "Haavelmo's paper, 'The Statistical Implications of a System of Simultaneous Equations',[10] marks a pivotal turning point, not in the statistical implications of econometric models, as historians typically presume, but in their causal counterparts."[11] Haavelmo's idea that an economic model depicts a series of hypothetical experiments and that policies can be simulated by modifying equations in the model became the basis of all currently used formalisms of econometric causal inference."[11] (The biostatistics and epidemiology literature on causal inference draws from different sources.[12]) It was first operationalized byRobert H. Strotz andHerman Wold (1960)[13] who advocated "wiping out" selected equations, and then translated into graphical models as "wiping out" incoming arrows.[14][15] This operation has subsequently led to Pearl's "do"-calculus[16][17] and to a mathematical theory ofcounterfactuals in econometric models.[18][19] Pearl further speculates that the reason economists do not generally appreciate these revolutionary contributions of Haavelmo is because economists themselves have still not reachedconsensus of what an economic model stands for, as attested by profound disagreements among econometric textbooks.[20]
including the Nobel Lecture on 7 December 1989Econometrics and the Welfare State| Awards | ||
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| Preceded by | Laureate of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics 1989 | Succeeded by |
