Ta-Chung Liu (; October 27, 1914 – August 14, 1975) was a Chinese American economist and econometrician. He was a professor of economics at

Johns Hopkins University Johns Hopkins University (Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1876, Johns Hopkins is the oldest research university in the United States and in the western hemisphere. It consi ...

and

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 ...

. During his time at Cornell, he mentored

Robert F. Engle Robert Fry Engle III (born November 10, 1942) is an American economist and statistician. He won the 2003 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, sharing the award with Clive Granger, "for methods of analyzing economic time series with time-va ...

, an econometrician who later won the

Nobel Prize in Economics The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, officially the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel ( sv, Sveriges riksbanks pris i ekonomisk vetenskap till Alfred Nobels minne), is an economics award administered ...

. He was also an influential advisor to the

Taiwanese Taiwanese may refer to: * Taiwanese language, another name for Taiwanese Hokkien * Something from or related to Taiwan ( Formosa) * Taiwanese aborigines, the indigenous people of Taiwan * Han Taiwanese, the Han people of Taiwan * Taiwanese people, ...

government on economic policy. He was awarded the Order of Brilliant Star, second rank, for his contributions to the country's development.

Biography

Born in

Peking } Beijing ( ; ; ), alternatively romanized as Peking ( ), is the capital of the People's Republic of China. It is the center of power and development of the country. Beijing is the world's most populous national capital city, with over 21 ...

on October 27, 1914, he earned a degree in

civil engineering Civil engineering is a professional engineering discipline that deals with the design, construction, and maintenance of the physical and naturally built environment, including public works such as roads, bridges, canals, dams, airports, sewa ...

from the Chiao Tung University () in 1936. He initially went to

to study railway engineering. Influenced by

Fritz Machlup Fritz Machlup (; ; December 15, 1902 – January 30, 1983) was an Austrian-American economist who was president of the International Economic Association from 1971–1974. He was one of the first economists to examine knowledge as an economic re ...

, he switched to economics. Liu earned a PhD degree in 1940 under Donald English. His dissertation was titled ''A Study in the Theory of Planning by the Individual Firm under Dynamic Conditions''. In 1947 he went back to Peking to work as professor of economics at

National Tsing Hua University National Tsing Hua University (NTHU; ) is a public research university in Hsinchu City, Taiwan. National Tsing Hua University was first founded in Beijing. After the Chinese Civil War, the then-president of the university, Mei Yiqi, and othe ...

. He left China again in 1948 to avoid the

communist revolution A communist revolution is a proletarian revolution often, but not necessarily, inspired by the ideas of Marxism that aims to replace capitalism with communism. Depending on the type of government, socialism can be used as an intermediate stag ...

and

Chinese Civil war The Chinese Civil War was fought between the Kuomintang-led government of the Republic of China and forces of the Chinese Communist Party, continuing intermittently since 1 August 1927 until 7 December 1949 with a Communist victory on m ...

. He was a lecturer at Johns Hopkins University until 1958. In the 1950s and 60s, Liu criticized the "

Cowles Commission The Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics is an economic research institute at Yale University. It was created as the Cowles Commission for Research in Economics at Colorado Springs in 1932 by businessman and economist Alfred Cowles. In 193 ...

method" of structural equation modelling and advocated

reduced form In statistics, and particularly in econometrics, the reduced form of a system of equations is the result of solving the system for the endogenous variables. This gives the latter as functions of the exogenous variables, if any. In econometrics, the ...

estimation instead, foreshadowing

Christopher Sims Christopher Albert Sims (born October 21, 1942) is an American econometrician and macroeconomist. He is currently the John J.F. Sherrerd '52 University Professor of Economics at Princeton University. Together with Thomas Sargent, he won the No ...

' VAR method of 1980. Both Liu and his wife committed suicide in 1975. He died at the Tompkins County Hospital in Ithaca, New York on August 14, 1975. A book, ''Quantitative Economics and Development: Essays in Memory of Ta-Chung Liu'', was published in his honor by his colleagues.

Taiwanese economics

Liu had a close working relationship with the government of Taiwan, and high ranking members of politics consulted him on economic policy. He served for several years as President Chiang Kai-shek's chief economic adviser in the 1960s. Together with his colleague at Cornell

Sho-Chieh Tsiang Sho-Chieh Tsiang (; August 25, 1918 – October 21, 1993) was a Chinese-American economist. He was born in China but resided primarily in the United States from 1949 until his death. He also resided in Taiwan in 1948 and in the 1980s. He was th ...

, he advocated against central planning and for creating an environment that encouraged private enterprises to compete on world markets. Liu took a leave from Cornell University in the 1969 academic year to serve as chairman of the Commission for Tax Reform for the Taiwanese Government. He also helped establish the first PhD program in Economics at

National Taiwan University National Taiwan University (NTU; ) is a public research university in Taipei, Taiwan. The university was founded in 1928 during Japanese rule as the seventh of the Imperial Universities. It was named Taihoku Imperial University and served d ...

Works

Books

* ''Analysis of stresses in railway track'', 1937 * ''Manufacturing Production Functions in the United States'' (with George H. Hildebrand), 1957 * ''The Economy of the Chinese Mainland'' (with Kung Chia Yeh) * ''Economic Trends in Communist China''

References

https://finance.sina.cn/sa/2007-01-08/detail-ikftssap1009212.d.html

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Liu, Ta-Chung 1914 births 1975 deaths Republic of China economists Cornell University alumni Johns Hopkins University faculty Cornell University faculty Fellows of the Econometric Society Educators from Beijing Writers from Beijing Economists from Beijing 1975 suicides Chinese emigrants to the United States Joint suicides Suicides in New York (state)