Overview

It is conventional to believe that econometrics is primarily a post-1950 development. This is correct only in the sense that it was in the twenty years after 1950 that econometrics became the primary method of applied economics. Yet, as work on the history of econometrics has recently shown, the foundations of econometric analysis were laid in the period of its early development during the half century before 1950. Our readings and commentary show how the basic methods, practices and conceptual framework of econometrics were developed in the context of applied economics and statistics in this early period. Although the earliest extract in fact dates from 1861 and the latest from 1952, all but three of the forty-five readings originally appeared between 1900 and 1950.

Our choice of readings is not designed to provide a complete history of all the elements of econometrics; rather, our aim has been to put together what we consider to be the most important papers in the development of both structural and time-series elements in econometrics. We need to draw the distinction between those papers in early econometrics which are remembered now, and those which were important in the process of developing ideas then. For example, many economists are familiar with Trygve Haavelmo's simultaneous equations paper of 1943, but not so many people knew (particularly before Haavelmo won the Nobel Prize in 1989) of his more important contributions in The Probability Approach in Econometrics of 1944.