Suchergebnisse

Statistical inference is the process of drawing conclusions from samples of statistical data about things not fully described or recorded in those samples. During the 1920s, economists in the United States articulated a general approach to statistical inference that downplayed the value of the inferential measures derived from probability theory that later came to be central to the idea of statistical inference in economics. This approach is illustrated by the practices of economists of the Bureau of Economic Analysis of the US Department of Agriculture, who regularly analyzed statistical samples to forecast supplies of various agricultural products. Forecasting represents an interesting case for studying the development of inferential methods, as analysts receive regular feedback on the effectiveness of their inferences when forecasts are compared with actual events.

The CES production function was introduced to economics in the 1961 paper "Capital-Labor Substitution and Economic Efficiency," by Kenneth Arrow, Hollis Chenery, Bagicha Minhas, and Robert Solow. The paper had an immediate and substantial impact on economic research, and the CES production function remains an important tool for both theoretical and empirical researchers. I review how the CES production function was derived and used in the paper, and, relying on archival sources, present a fine-grained account of the collaborative process that produced the paper. I also discuss the CES production function as an example of multiple simultaneous discovery and suggest reasons for its broad and rapid diffusion.

I review changes over time in the meaning that economists in the US attributed to the phrase "statistical inference," as well as changes in how inference was conducted. Prior to WWII, leading statistical economists rejected probability theory as a source of measures and procedures to be used in statistical inference. Trygve Haavelmo and the early Cowles Commission econometricians developed an approach to statistical inference based on probability theory, but the arguments they offered in defense of this approach were not always responsive to the concerns of earlier empirical economists that the data available to economists did not satisfy the assumptions required for such an approach. Despite this, after a period of about twenty-five years, a consensus developed that methods of inference derived from probability theory were an almost essential part of empirical research in economics. I conclude with some speculation on possible reasons for this transformation in thinking about statistical inference.

Abstract
Zvi Griliches was one of the leading econometricians of his generation. His early work involved empirical analyses of the sources of productivity growth in twentieth-century US agriculture, including his dissertation on the diffusion of hybrid corn and his analysis of the long-run growth in fertilizer use by US farmers. In this research Griliches developed theoretical explanations of these phenomena in the form of narratives of rational, profit-seeking people responding to changing circumstances and novel information, and he used these narratives to inform his decisions about what statistical techniques to employ and how to implement them. Narratives served the same purposes for Griliches that mathematical models were coming to serve in the work of his contemporaries, but they made more sense for Griliches, given his belief that he was analyzing transitions between economic equilibria, a process for which economists had not developed useful mathematical models.

In his Treatise on Probability John Maynard Keynes criticized the tools of statistical inference derived from probability that were coming into use in the early twentieth century, and outlined an alternative approach to statistical inference based on the logic of induction. This essay argues that Keynes's ideas were embraced and echoed by several leading US economists during the 1920s and 1930s, including those developing and applying the most sophisticated statistical methods of the day. These economists expressed views regarding statistical inference that were quite similar to those found in Keynes's Treatise, often citing Keynes as an authority in support. Also, the inferential methods recommended and actually employed by these writers were consistent with Keynes's ideas about the proper methods of statistical inference.