Hirsh Zvi Griliches ( ; 12 September 1930 – 4 November 1999) was an

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 ...

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 highe ...

. The works by Zvi Griliches mostly concerned the

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 anal ...

technological change Technological change (TC) or technological development is the overall process of invention, innovation and diffusion of technology or processes.From ''The New Palgrave Dictionary otechnical change by S. Metcalfe. •biased and biased techno ...

, including

empirical studies Empirical research is research using empirical evidence. It is also a way of gaining knowledge by means of direct and indirect observation or experience. Empiricism values some research more than other kinds. Empirical evidence (the record of one ...

diffusion of innovations Diffusion of innovations is a theory that seeks to explain how, why, and at what rate new ideas and technology spread. Everett Rogers, a professor of communication studies, popularized the theory in his book ''Diffusion of Innovations''; the boo ...

and the role of R & D, patents, and education.

Biography

He was born in

Kaunas Kaunas (; ; also see other names) is the second-largest city in Lithuania after Vilnius and an important centre of Lithuanian economic, academic, and cultural life. Kaunas was the largest city and the centre of a county in the Duchy of Traka ...

Lithuania Lithuania (; lt, Lietuva ), officially the Republic of Lithuania ( lt, Lietuvos Respublika, links=no ), is a country in the Baltic region of Europe. It is one of three Baltic states and lies on the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea. Lithuania ...

in an assimilated

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 ...

family that spoke Russian at home. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

he was sent to the

Dachau concentration camp , , commandant = List of commandants , known for = , location = Upper Bavaria, Southern Germany , built by = Germany , operated by = ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) , original use = Political prison , construction ...

. In 1947 he emigrated to Palestine, where he served in the pre-state

Israeli army The Israel Defense Forces (IDF; he, צְבָא הַהֲגָנָה לְיִשְׂרָאֵל , ), alternatively referred to by the Hebrew-language acronym (), is the national military of the State of Israel. It consists of three service branch ...

, learned

Hebrew Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...

, passed high school equivalence exam, and studied for a year at

Hebrew University The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI; he, הַאוּנִיבֶרְסִיטָה הַעִבְרִית בִּירוּשָׁלַיִם) is a public university, public research university based in Jerusalem, Israel. Co-founded by Albert Einstein ...

. He then moved to the United States, where he earned a B.S. in Agricultural Economics from the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant un ...

, and then a Ph.D. in Economics at the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...

, supervised by Theodore Schultz. In his classic 1957 Ph.D. dissertation, ''Hybrid Corn: An Exploration in the Economics of Technological Change'', published as an article in the October 1957 issue of ''

Econometrica ''Econometrica'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal of economics, publishing articles in many areas of economics, especially econometrics. It is published by Wiley-Blackwell on behalf of the Econometric Society. The current editor-in-chief is ...

'', Griliches demonstrated that the penetration of corn seeds followed the

logistic curve A logistic function or logistic curve is a common S-shaped curve (sigmoid curve) with equation f(x) = \frac, where For values of x in the domain of real numbers from -\infty to +\infty, the S-curve shown on the right is obtained, with the ...

. It was found later through multiple examples by

Edwin Mansfield Edwin Mansfield (1930 – 17 November 1997) was a professor of economics at University of Pennsylvania from 1964 and until his death. From 1985 he was also a director of the Center for Economics and Technology. Edwin Mansfield is best know ...

and other researchers that this is a general rule for

. The dissertation was one of the first scientific works that treated the development of new technology as an economic phenomenon. Previously, economists had treated it as exogenous. Most innovations either make production more efficient, or improve the quality of goods. The analysis of measurement of the impact of innovations on economics led Griliches to his fundamental studies of

economic growth Economic growth can be defined as the increase or improvement in the inflation-adjusted market value of the goods and services produced by an economy in a financial year. Statisticians conventionally measure such growth as the percent rate o ...

productivity Productivity is the efficiency of production of goods or services expressed by some measure. Measurements of productivity are often expressed as a ratio of an aggregate output to a single input or an aggregate input used in a production proces ...

, production function, consumption function, measurements of economic input and output, hedonic prices, and their reflection in price indices. Griliches also published important works of

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. ...

, including distributed lags (

time series In mathematics, a time series is a series of data points indexed (or listed or graphed) in time order. Most commonly, a time series is a sequence taken at successive equally spaced points in time. Thus it is a sequence of discrete-time data. Ex ...

) and aggregation. He was particularly interested in the measurements of hidden variables. Griliches served as the President 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. ...

in 1975, and as the President of the

American Economic Association The American Economic Association (AEA) is a learned society in the field of economics. It publishes several peer-reviewed journals acknowledged in business and academia. There are some 23,000 members. History and Constitution The AEA was esta ...

in 1993. From 1969 to 1977 he was one of editors of the journal ''

''. He served on the Stigler Commission in 1961 and the Boskin Commission in 1996, both of which were convened by the

United States Senate The United States Senate is the upper chamber of the United States Congress, with the House of Representatives being the lower chamber. Together they compose the national bicameral legislature of the United States. The composition and po ...

to evaluate the measurement of

inflation In economics, inflation is an increase in the general price level of goods and services in an economy. When the general price level rises, each unit of currency buys fewer goods and services; consequently, inflation corresponds to a reduct ...

. In 1965, Zvi Griliches won the prestigious

John Bates Clark Medal The John Bates Clark Medal is awarded by the American Economic Association to "that American economist under the age of forty who is adjudged to have made a significant contribution to economic thought and knowledge." The award is named after the ...

. He was elected to the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, a ...

in 1965 and to the

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nat ...

in 1975. He was also elected Distinguished Fellow of the

, Fellow of 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 ...

, Fellow of the

American Association for the Advancement of Science The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is an American international non-profit organization with the stated goals of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific respons ...

, and Fellow of the American Agricultural Economics Association. He died on November 4, 1999, in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Memorials and tributes

The Zvi Griliches Research Data Center was established in his memory at the Samuel Neaman Institute for Advanced Studies in Science and Technology in Israel. The Zvi Griliches Excellence Award was established by the Economics Education and Research Consortium (EERC) in Russia and other former Soviet Union countries. The Zvi Griliches Research Seminar in the Economics of Innovation was held by the

Barcelona Graduate School of Economics The Barcelona School of Economics (BSE) is an institution for research and graduate education in economics, finance, data science, and the social sciences located in Barcelona, Spain. The school's academic offer includes Master's degrees as well ...

to promote interactions between academic researchers, innovation policy practitioners, statistical office analysts and PhD students with a general interest in analyzing technological innovation from an economic point of view. In 2001, in the memory of Zvi Griliches, the International Advisory Board of the New Economic School, with the full approval of the entire NES community, decided to establish an annual series of lectures in economics. �
The Zvi Griliches Memorial Lectures
�� are presented by leading scholars and open for everyone.

References

Diamond, Arthur M., Jr. "Zvi Griliches's Contributions to the Economics of Technology and Growth." ''Economics of Innovation and New Technology'' 13, no. 4 (June 2004): 365–97.

Notes

External links

Obituary on the University of California website

A Biographical Memoir by Marc Nerlove

Zvi Griliches on Diffusion, Lags and Productivity Growth ...Connecting the Dots by Paul A. David

In Memoriam: Zvi Griliches, 1930–1999 by Manuel Trajtenberg and Ernst R. Berndt

A tree of Zvi Griliches's students, postdocs, coauthors, and their students

Marc Nerlove, "Zvi Griliches", Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences (2001)
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Griliches, Zvi 1930 births 1999 deaths 20th-century American economists Jewish economists Econometricians Jewish American economists Jewish American scientists Lithuanian emigrants to Mandatory Palestine Soviet emigrants to Israel Lithuanian Jews Israeli emigrants to the United States Harvard University faculty Hebrew University of Jerusalem alumni University of California, Berkeley alumni University of Chicago alumni Fellows of the American Statistical Association Fellows of the Econometric Society Presidents of the Econometric Society Presidents of the American Economic Association Distinguished Fellows of the American Economic Association Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences 20th-century American Jews