'Irving Fisher\r'

'BIOGRAPHY 20. 1 Irving fisher (1867 -1947) Irving fisher was born at Saugerties, New York, the son of a Congregational minister. As did his father, Fisher studied at Yale. Mathematics was his favorite subject. He won primary prize in a math contend even as a freshman; his doctorial dissertation,Mathematical Investigations in the Theory of Value and Prices (1892), was a boundary in the development of mathematical economics. This dissertation won immediate praise from no lesser figures than Francis Y.Edgeworth and Vilfredo Pareto, 2 renowned economists. Some 55 years later, Ragnar Frisch (eventual victor of the 1969 Nobel Prize in Economic Science) would say near Fisher: â€Å"He has been anywhere from a ex to two generations ahead of his time …. it will be hard to find any single decease that has been more influential than Fishers dissertation. ” It is no wonder that Fisher was a full professor of political thrift at Yale within seven years of graduati on. He stayed there during his entire career.Fishers main contributions lie in the surmise of utility and consumer choice, the theory of interest and capital, and the theory of statistics (index numbers, distributed lags). These contributions are reflected in such works as The Nature of Capital and Income (1906), The Theory of Interest (1907), The buying Power of Money (1911) -a great pioneering venture in econometrics †and The making of Index Numbers (1922). In the Making of Index Numbers, Fisher tested many of the formulas introduced in this chapter by the criteria also discussed here.The few formulas that got superlative ratings (such as the Edgeworth index and Fishers own ideal index) include measuring stick (or price) weights from both of the time periods or geographic areas have-to doe with in the price (or quantity) comparison that is being made. However, the comprehension of two sets of weights tends to make the construction of such indexes costly, which is the major reason why these highly rated indexes are rarely used. (One exception: The Bureau of Foreign handicraft of the U. S.Department of Commerce calculates monthly quantity indexes of exports and imports using Fishers formula. ) The works cited in a higher place established Fishers reputation as the countrys greatest scientific economist. As such, he served as president of the American Economic Association and was a founder and the archetypal president of the Econometric Society. He also compete a major role in the fundamental law of the Cowles Foundation (now at Yale) as a performer to nurture mathematical and quantitative research in economics.\r\n'