Ragnar Frisch - Economic Quotes

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The majority of the economic oscillations which we encounter seem to be explained most plausibly as free oscillations.

Ragnar Frisch
In this feverish world of ours, where one wants the economic analyses to produce easily understandable results quickly and at the least possible cost, some of us have fallen into the habit of assuming for simplicity that the hundreds sometimes thousands of variables that enter into the analyses are linked together by very simple relationships. Frequently we even go so far as to assume linear relationships. Only in this way have we been able to feed our problems into the electronic computers and get mechanical answers quickly and at low cost.

Ragnar Frisch
Econometrics is by no means the same as economic statistics. Nor is it identical with what we call general economic theory, although a considerable portion of this theory has a definitely quantitative character. Nor should econometrics be taken as synonymous with the application of mathematics to economics. Experience has shown that each of these three view-points, that of statistics, economic theory, and mathematics, is a necessary, but not by itself a sufficient, condition for a real understanding of the quantitative relations in modern economic life. It is the unification of all three that is powerful. And it is this unification that constitutes econometrics.

Ragnar Frisch
Two important features in the modern development of economics are the application of mathematics to abstract economic reasoning... and the attempt at placing economics on a numerical and experimental basis by an intensive study of economic statistics.

Ragnar Frisch
In this essay on econometrics in its conception and its use in economic planning for the betterment of man's fate, I will try to cover a very broad field.
When talking about the methodology in the particular fields mentioned - about which I am supposed to have a little more than second hand knowledge - I have always found it utterly inadequate to focus attention only on these special fields without seeing them in a much broader perspective.
Therefore it was inevitable that I should have to include in the field of vision of this paper also some branches of science where I can only speak as a layman, hopefully as a somewhat informed layman. For whatever blunders I may have made in these fields I must ask for the reader's forgiveness

Ragnar Frisch
I believe that economic theory has arrived at a point in its development where the appeal to quantitative empirical data has become more necessary than ever. At the same time its analyses have reached a degree of complexity that require the application of a more refined scientific method than that employed by the classical economists.

Ragnar Frisch
In the last decade's intensive study of all sorts of social and economic time series, it has become clear, it seems to me, that the usual time series technique is not quite adequate for the purpose which the social investigator is pursuing... We want to find out on more or less empirical grounds what is actually present in the series at hand, that is to say, what sort of components the series contains.

Ragnar Frisch
Intermediate between mathematics, statistics, and economics, we find a new discipline which, for lack of a better name, may be called econometrics. Econometrics has as its aim to subject abstract laws of theoretical political economy or "pure" economics to experimental and numerical verification, and thus to turn pure economics, as far as possible, into a science in the strict sense of the word.

Ragnar Frisch
We may predict that the science of which we try to be the humble and devoted servants will in the future life of the nations be an important factor in eliminating maladjustments between fundamental economic sectors and assure a smooth and progressive utilization of resources... One wants men with a knowledge of the characteristic features of the economic and social structure of their country and with a fundamental theoretical knowledge along modern lines.

Ragnar Frisch
Certain exterior impulses hit the economic mechanism and thereby initiate more or less regular oscillations.

Ragnar Frisch