Profile Major Works Resources

Henri Theil, 1924-2000.

Dutch econometrician.

Henri Theil was born in Amsterdam, and raised in Utrecht. Theil began as a physics student at the University of Utrecht, but his studies were interrupted by World War II. After a period in hiding, Theil was arrested by the Nazis and imprisoned in the Herzogenbusch concentration camp for the remainder of the war. After liberation, Theil proceeded to enroll at the University of Amsterdam to study economics, receiving his doctorate in 1951.

From 1952 to 1955, Henri Theil worked at the Dutch government's Centraal Plan Bureau (CPB) in the Hague, under director Jan Tinbergen. It is there Theil got involved in macroeconometric modeling. Theil (1953) invented the two-stage least squares regression method for simultaneous equations. Although not published in a major journal, Theil's paper was mimeographed and introduced at the Cowles Commission in 1954.

Theil had been appointed professor of econometrics at the Netherlands School of Economics (now Erasmus University) in Rotterdam in 1953.   Theil spent 1955-56 at the University of Chicago as a visiting scholar, and upon his return founded the Econometric Institute at Netherlands School in 1956.

In 1966, Theil moved to the United States to take up a permanent appointment as the University of Chicago, where he remained until his retirement in 1981.

 

  

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Major Works of Henri Theil

  • "On the Time Shape of Economic Microvariables and the Munich Business Test", 1952, Rev of ISI.
  • Linear Aggregation of Economic Relations, 1954
  • "Recent Experiences with the Munich Business Test", 1955, Econometrica.
  • Specification Errors and the Estimation of Economic Relationships", 1957, Rev of ISI.
  • Economic Forecasts and Policy, 1958 [1961 2nd ed.]
  • "The Final Form of Econometric Equation Systems", with J.C.G. Boot, 1962, Rev of ISI.
  • "A Reconsideration of the Keynes-Tinbergen Discussion on Econometric Techniques", 1963, De Economist.
  • "Some Developments of Economic Thought in the Netherlands", 1964, AER.
  • Optimal Decision Rules for Government and Industry, 1964
  • Applied Economic Forecasting, 1967.
  • Economics and Information Theory, 1967.
  • Principles of Econometrics, 1971.
  • Applied Demand Analysis, with K.W. Clements, 1987
  • "The Development of International Inequality, 1960-1985", 1989, J of Econometrics.
  • International Evidence on Consumption Patterns, with C.F. Chung and J.L. Seale, 1989

 
HET

 
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Resources on  Henri Theil

 

 
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