Trygve Haavelmo
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Trygve Magnus Haavelmo (13 December 1911 – 28 July 1999), born in Skedsmo,
Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and t ...
, was an
economist An economist is a professional and practitioner in the 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 field there are ...
whose research interests centered on
econometrics Econometrics is the application of statistical methods to economic data in order to give empirical content to economic relationships.M. Hashem Pesaran (1987). "Econometrics," '' The New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economics'', v. 2, p. 8 p. 8†...
. He received the
Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences 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 ...
in 1989.


Biography

After attending Oslo Cathedral School, Haavelmo received a degree in
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 analy ...
from the University of Oslo in 1930 and eventually joined the Institute of Economics with the recommendation of Ragnar 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 at
University College London , mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £143 million (2020) , budget =  ...
while he subsequently traveled to Berlin, Geneva, and Oxford for additional studies. 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 with Nortraship in the Statistical Department in New York City. He received his PhD in 1946 for his work on The Probability Approach in Econometrics. He was a professor of economics and statistics at the
University of Oslo The University of Oslo ( no, Universitetet i Oslo; la, Universitas Osloensis) is a public research university located in Oslo, Norway. It is the highest ranked and oldest university in Norway. It is consistently ranked among the top univers ...
between 1948–79 and was the trade department head of division from 1947–48. Haavelmo acquired a prominent position in modern economics through his logical critique of a series of custom conceptions in mathematical analysis. In 1989, Haavelmo was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics "for his clarification of the
probability theory Probability theory is the branch of mathematics concerned with probability. Although there are several different probability interpretations, probability theory treats the concept in a rigorous mathematical manner by expressing it through a set o ...
foundations of econometrics and his analyses of simultaneous economic structures." Haavelmo resided at Østerås in
Bærum Bærum () is a municipality in the Greater Oslo Region in Norway that forms an affluent suburb of Oslo on the west coast of the city. Bærum is Norway's fifth largest municipality with a population of 128,760 (2021). It is part of the electora ...
. He died on 28 July 1999 in Oslo.


Legacy

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', marks a pivotal turning point, not in the statistical implications of econometric models, as historians typically presume, but in their causal counterparts." 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. (The biostatistics and epidemiology literature on causal inference draws from different sources.) It was first operationalized by Robert H. Strotz and
Herman Wold Herman Ole Andreas Wold (25 December 1908 – 16 February 1992) was a Norwegian-born econometrician and statistician who had a long career in Sweden. Wold was known for his work in mathematical economics, in time series analysis, and in econometric ...
(1960) who advocated "wiping out" selected equations, and then translated into graphical models as "wiping out" incoming arrows. This operation has subsequently led to Pearl's "do"-calculus and to a mathematical theory of counterfactuals in econometric models. Pearl further speculates that the reason economists do not generally appreciate these revolutionary contributions of Haavelmo is because economists themselves have still not reached consensus of what an economic model stands for, as attested by profound disagreements among econometric textbooks.


References


External links


List of publications
* including the Nobel Lecture on 7 December 1989 ''Econometrics and the Welfare State''
Model Discovery and Trygve Haavelmo’s Legacy
by David F. Hendry and Søren Johansen.]
Trygve Haavelmo Growth Model
by Elmer G. Wiens * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Haavelmo, Trygve Econometricians University of Oslo alumni Alumni of University College London Norwegian mathematicians Norwegian Nobel laureates Keynesians Nobel laureates in Economics People from Skedsmo 1911 births 1999 deaths Neo-Keynesian economists Fellows of the Econometric Society Presidents of the Econometric Society 20th-century Norwegian economists Nortraship people People educated at Oslo Cathedral School