Otto Eckstein (August 1, 1927 – March 22, 1984) was a German-American
economist
An economist is a professional and practitioner in the social sciences, social science discipline of economics.
The individual may also study, develop, and apply theories and concepts from economics and write about economic policy. Within this ...
. He was a key developer and proponent of the theory of
core inflation
Core inflation represents the long run trend in the price level. In measuring long run inflation, transitory price changes should be excluded. One way of accomplishing this is by excluding items frequently subject to volatile prices, like foo ...
, which proposed that in determining accurate metrics of long run inflation, the transitory price changes of items subject to volatile pricing, such as food and energy, are to be excluded from computation.
Eckstein was born in
Germany
Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...
in 1927 to a
Jewish
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
business family.
In 1938, when he was 11 years old, he and several other family members fled the
Nazi
Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...
regime, first emigrating to
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...
, and then, a year later, moving to the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
, where he made his permanent home.
He held an A.B. from Princeton University and a Ph.D. from Harvard University and became a
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
economics professor, an economic consultant to
President Lyndon Baines Johnson, and a member of the
President's Council of Economic Advisers
The Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) is a United States agency within the Executive Office of the President established in 1946, which advises the President of the United States on economic policy. The CEA provides much of the empirical resea ...
from 1964 to 1966. In 1969, he and
Donald Marron co-founded
Data Resources Inc.,
[ the largest non-governmental distributor of economic data in the world,][ which built and maintained the largest macroeconometric model of the era. In 1975 he was elected as a ]Fellow of the American Statistical Association
Like many other academic professional societies, the American Statistical Association (ASA) uses the title of Fellow of the American Statistical Association as its highest honorary grade of membership. The number of new fellows per year is limited ...
. In 1979 he sold DRI for over $100 million to McGraw Hill
McGraw Hill is an American educational publishing company and one of the "big three" educational publishers that publishes educational content, software, and services for pre-K through postgraduate education. The company also publishes referenc ...
.
Eckstein was married and had three children. He died of cancer in 1984, at the age of 56.[
]
Bibliography
* "Water and Resource Development," 1958
* "Inflation, the Wage-Price Spiral and Economic Growth", 1958, in Relationship of Prices to Economic Stability and Growth
* "Staff Report on Employment, Growth and Price Levels," 1959.
* "A Simulation of the U.S. Economy in Recession", with J. S. Duesenberry and G. Fromm, 1960, Econometrica
* "The Determination of Money Wages in American Industry", with T. Wilson, 1962, QJE
* "The Price Equation", with G. Fromm, 1968, AER
* "The Inflation Process in the United States", with R. Brinner, 1972,
* "Industry Price Equations", with D. Wyss, 1972, in Eckstein, editor, Econometrics of Price Determination
* "The Data Resources Model: Uses, structure, and the analysis of the US economy", with E.W. Green and A. Sinai, 1974, in Klein and Burmeister, editors, Econometric Model Performance
* "Econometric Models and the Formation of Business Expectations", 1976, Challenge
* "National Economic Information Systems for Developed Countries", 1977, in Perlman, editor, Organization and Retrieval of Economic Knowledge
* "The Great Recession," 1978
* "Long-Term Properties of the Price-Wage Mechanism in the United States, 1891 to 1977", with J. Girola, 1978, REStat
* "Public Finance," 1979.
*
* "Econometric Models for Forecasting and Policy Analysis: The present state of the art", 1981, in Kmenta, editor "Large-Scale Macroeconometric Models"
*
*
References
External links
Otto Eckstein, 1927-1984
profile at the New School
The New School is a private research university in New York City. It was founded in 1919 as The New School for Social Research with an original mission dedicated to academic freedom and intellectual inquiry and a home for progressive thinkers. ...
NBER tribute by Allen Sinai
{{DEFAULTSORT:Eckstein, Otto
1927 births
1984 deaths
United States Council of Economic Advisers
German emigrants to the United States
Harvard University faculty
Harvard University alumni
20th-century American economists
Fellows of the Econometric Society
Fellows of the American Statistical Association
Princeton University alumni