Irving Fisher's Econometrics
THE great American who has departed from us was much more than an economist. But vast realm over which he held sway and intellectual climate of epoch that nourished his thought have been admirably surveyed in this journal,' and I shall confine myself to Fisher's pureLy scientific work in our field. This will restrict our subject. But it will not lower itat least, it could do so only through my own fault. For whatever else Fisher may have been-social philosopher, economic engineer, passionate crusader in many causes that he believed to be essential to welfare of humanity, teacher, inventor, businessman-I venture to predict that his name will stand in history principally as name of this country's greatest scientific economist. I shall restrict my task still further. Mr. Sasuly, who has been a close collaborator of Fisher's, has presented a vivid and adequate picture of his statistical work and in particular has set forth historical importance of The Making of Index Numbers and of Fisher's most original contribution to statistical method, Distributed Lag. I am not going to repeat what he has written. It is theorist only, not statistician, who will be considered in what is to follow. Nevertheless, statistician cannot be entirely elimintated even from section of Fisher's activities with which I propose todeal. For throughout and from start, Fisher aimed at a theory that would be statistically operative, in other words, at not merely quantitative but also numerical results. His work as a whole ideally fits program of the advancement of economic theory in its relation to statistics and mathematics and of unification of theoretical-quantitative and empirical-quantitative approach.2 Considering date of his first book, we must look upon him as most important of pioneers