Holbrook Working (February 5, 1895 – October 5, 1985) was an American professor of
economics
Economics () is the social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services.
Economics focuses on the behaviour and interactions of economic agents and how economies work. Microeconomics analyzes ...
and
statistics at
Stanford University's Food Research Institute known for his contributions on
hedging, on the theory of
futures
Futures may mean:
Finance
*Futures contract, a tradable financial derivatives contract
*Futures exchange, a financial market where futures contracts are traded
* ''Futures'' (magazine), an American finance magazine
Music
* ''Futures'' (album), a ...
prices, on an early theory of
market maker
A market maker or liquidity provider is a company or an individual that quotes both a buy and a sell price in a tradable asset held in inventory, hoping to make a profit on the ''bid–ask spread'', or ''turn.'' The benefit to the firm is that i ...
behavior, and on the
theory of storage
The Theory of Storage describes features observed in commodity markets:
When available supplies of the commodity in question are high, and the working inventories of commercial consumers of that commodity are accordingly held to a minimum,
* Futur ...
(including the ''Working curve'' which plots the difference between short term and long term grain futures prices against current inventory).
Biography
He was born in
Fort Collins, Colorado, on February 5, 1895.
Working earned his Ph.D. in Agricultural Economics from the
University of Wisconsin–Madison
A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United Stat ...
in 1921. He taught at
Cornell University
Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to tea ...
and the
University of Minnesota
The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public land-grant research university in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States. ...
before he joined Stanford's Food Research Institute in 1925. His younger brother
Elmer Working made a major contribution on the
identification problem for demand curves in econometrics, with which Holbrook Working was also involved.
Working disagreed with
Keynes
John Maynard Keynes, 1st Baron Keynes, ( ; 5 June 1883 – 21 April 1946), was an English economist whose ideas fundamentally changed the theory and practice of macroeconomics and the economic policies of governments. Originally trained in m ...
's
backwardation
Normal backwardation, also sometimes called backwardation, is the market condition where the price of a commodity's forward or futures contract is trading below the ''expected'' spot price at contract maturity. The resulting futures or forward ...
theory of futures prices, which argued that short hedgers (farmers) drive down futures prices because of their demand for ''price insurance''. Working argued that there could be hedgers on both sides of the market and that hedging was essentially not a risk reduction technique, but "speculation in the basis" which allows informed traders and commodity dealers to profit from their knowledge of future changes in the difference between futures and spot prices.
He was a founding member of the
Econometric Society
The Econometric Society is an international society of academic economists interested in applying statistical tools to their field. It is an independent organization with no connections to societies of professional mathematicians or statisticians. ...
and was elected a Fellow of the American Agricultural Economics Association, the
American Statistical Association
The American Statistical Association (ASA) is the main professional organization for statisticians and related professionals in the United States. It was founded in Boston, Massachusetts on November 27, 1839, and is the second oldest continuousl ...
, and the
American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Stanford Historical Society
accessed 4/24/07. In 1981 he was awarded the Wilks Memorial Award
The Wilks Memorial Award is awarded by the American Statistical Association to recognize outstanding contributions to statistics. It was established in 1964 and is awarded yearly. It is named in memory of the statistician Samuel S. Wilks. The awa ...
by the American Statistical Association.
He died on October 5, 1985, in Santa Clara, California
Santa Clara (; Spanish for " Saint Clare") is a city in Santa Clara County, California. The city's population was 127,647 at the 2020 census, making it the eighth-most populous city in the Bay Area. Located in the southern Bay Area, the cit ...
.
See also
* Working–Hotelling procedure
Notable papers
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References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Working, Holbrook
1895 births
1985 deaths
20th-century American economists
Cornell University faculty
Fellows of the American Statistical Association
Stanford University faculty
Fellows of the Econometric Society