Biographical Memoirs Volume 60 (1991) / Chapter Skim
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9. Jacob Marschak
9. Jacob Marschak
Pages 128-147
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From page 129... ...
The world economy and economists' perceptions and theories were altering rapidly, and Marschak experienced, in addition, international variances in academic environment especially in traditions and modes of economic thought. To all these influences must be added the fact that he was a Russian and a few, whose educational ant!
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From page 130... ...
from every useful angle, drawing on every good Plea and theoretical presupposition, then subjected! it to severe criticism regarding utility, clarity of expression, and contribution to the understanding of economic issues.
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Marschak ant! his entire family left Kiev to settle in a resort in the Terek region of the northern Caucasus, where political activity was also intense.
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From page 132... ...
By this time Marschak, like many of his friends and political colleagues, had decided there was no longer a viable political cause in Russia to support. In 1919, after studying statistics briefly at the Kiev Institute of Economics, he deci(led to study economics at the University of Berlin for six months.
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From page 133... ...
His interests and aspirations shifted increasingly toward the academic, and he spent some months in England in 1927 on a Rockefeller Foundation travelling fellowship the first of several support grants from that source. Back in Germany he joined the staff of the University of Kiel's Institut fur Seeverkehr and; Wellwirtschaft (Institute for Maritime Shipping and World Economics)
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From page 134... ...
in which formal statistical methods and economic theory were used jointly to interpret empirical economic data. His careful work on the elasticity of demand!
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New York (1938-1943) Marschak spent December 1938 to August 1939 in the United States as a Rockefeller Foundation travelling fellow.
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Mann and Abraham Wald proved a fundamental consistency property of the es~ 1 Tinbergen, Statistical Testing of Business Cycle Theories, 2 vols. (Geneva: Economic Intelligence Service of the League of Nations, 1939; reprint ea., New York: Agatha Press, 1956)
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Two elements were needed: appropriate statistical methods and an economic theory with which to derive equations that fit the data. The theoretical impetus came from John Maynard Keynes ant!
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Though sometimes going far afield, Kenneth }. Arrow ant} Leonid Hurwicz worked on problems in economic theory and statistical inference suggested by the basic modeling effort.
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From page 139... ...
Ancirews he carried out one major stucly of his own: the first application of the simultaneous equations technique to the estimation of production functions ~1944,2~. Using new statistical approaches, this study resolved the clifficulties of interpretation that had been found in the pioneering work of Paul Douglas.
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From page 140... ...
The Economics of Information and Team Theory Turning the directorship of the Cowles Commission over to Koopmans in 1948, Marschak moved very rapicIly into pure scholarship and into more abstract and theoretical work than ever before. He was greatly excited by John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern's revival of the expected utility theory in its axiomatic form, by Abraham WaId's exploration of the foundations of statistical decision theory, and (at his own Cowles Commission)
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From page 141... ...
His work with Radner on this subject was embodied in the book The Economic Theory of Teams (1972, }~.4 Stochastic Decision The third! major area of Marschak's research after 1948 was stochastic decision, which, while recognizing that individuals are not thoroughly consistent, also recognizes that the theory of rational behavior has some foundation.
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From page 142... ...
recognition of his work grew especially as his former students and junior colleagues became information disseminators. He was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1962, a distinguished fellow of the American Economic Association in 1967, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1972.
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Pierce, "Notes on Recollections of Kiev and the Northern Caucasus, 19171918," on file at the Regional Oral History Office, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
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Assets, prices and monetary theory. Economica N
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Economic aspects of atomic power, eds. Sam Schurr and Jacob Marschak.
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From page 146... ...
Economic theory of teams. New Haven sity Press.
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