Zvi Griliches

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Hirsh Zvi Griliches (born September 12, 1930 in Kaunas , Lithuania , † November 4, 1999 in Cambridge , Massachusetts ) was an economist at Harvard University .

Life

Griliches was born in Kaunas ( Lithuania ) to a Jewish, Russian-speaking family. His father Efim Ilyich Griliches (1896–1945) was a worker in a tobacco factory, his mother was Clara Ziv Griliches (? –1945). Griliches had a younger sister Ellen Griliches (1933-1996).

During the Second World War , he and his family were deported to the Dachau concentration camp . On May 2, 1945, the camp was liberated by American troops, whereupon Griliches spent two years with the Zionist youth association Hashomer Hatzair in Munich . In 1947 he tried to get to Palestine illegally by ship , but was arrested by the British and taken to a camp in Cyprus . During the seven months of imprisonment, he established relationships with academics and learned the English language . After his release he came to Palestine, where he briefly joined the armed forces of Israel (which did not yet exist as a state) and worked in a kibbutz . In the process, he learned the Hebrew language and was finally able to enroll in a history course at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem thanks to a passed university entrance qualification .

Griliche's sister and uncle emigrated to America after the war , so he applied to study agricultural economics at the University of Berkeley , which he started with a scholarship in 1951 . After two years he obtained a bachelor's degree , and after another year a master's degree in economics and econometrics . During this time he also met his wife Diane Asseo Griliches, with whom he had two children: Eve Griliches (born 1957) and Marc Griliches (born 1960).

In 1954 he went to the University of Chicago , where he received an assistant professorship in economics in 1956 and received his doctorate in 1957 . In 1959 Griliches received US citizenship .

Griliches was President of the US Econometric Society in 1975 . From 1969 to 1977 was one of the editors of the trade journal Econometrica . Twice (1961 Stigler Commission , 1996 Boskin Commission ) he worked on committees of the US Senate to evaluate the measurement of inflation . In 1993, Sen chaired the American Economic Association as president-elect.

Zvi Griliches died on November 4, 1999 in Cambridge, Massachusetts ( USA ) at the age of 69 of pancreatic cancer .

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Most of Griliches' work concerned the economics of technological change, focusing on empirical studies on innovation diffusion and the role of R&D , patents and education .

In his dissertation of 1957 Hybrid Corn: An Exploration in the Economics of Technological Change ( Hybrid Corn: A study of the economy, technological change ), he demonstrated that seed penetration in maize the logistic curve follows. Edwin Mansfield and other researchers later found out that this is a general principle in the diffusion of innovations (i.e. technological progress ). Griliches was one of the first scientists to treat technology development as an economic phenomenon (as opposed to an exogenous influencing factor ).

Most innovations either make the production process more efficient or improve the quality of the goods produced. By analyzing the measurement of the influence of innovations on the economy, Griliches came up with his fundamental studies on economic growth , productivity , production functions , measurements of economic inputs and outputs, hedonic price calculation and their mapping in price indices .

In addition, Griliches published important work on econometrics , including the delay effect in time series analysis and the aggregation of raw microeconomic data. He was particularly interested in measuring hidden variables in the production functions.

Awards

Zvi Griliches won the coveted John Bates Clark Medal in 1965 . In the same year he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 1975 to the National Academy of Sciences . He also received the honorary titles Distinguished Fellow of the American Economic Association , Fellow of the Econometric Society , Fellow of the American Statistical Association , Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and Fellow of the American Agricultural Economics Association .

In his memory, the Zvi Griliches Research Data Center was founded at the Samuel Neaman Institute for Advanced Studies in Science and Technology in Israel . In Russia and some other states of the former Soviet Union he was given the Zvi Griliches Excellence Award .

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Individual evidence

  1. ^ NY Times Obituary: Zvi Griliches, 69, an Authority On Analysis of Economic Data
  2. ↑ Obituary in the Harvard Gazette (English) ( Memento of the original from December 27, 2004 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.news.harvard.edu
  3. ^ Past and Present Officers. aeaweb.org ( American Economic Association ), accessed October 27, 2015 .
  4. ↑ Zvi Griliches in the Notable Names Database (English)

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Griliches, Zvi
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Griliches, Hirsh Zvi
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American economist
DATE OF BIRTH September 12, 1930
PLACE OF BIRTH Kaunas , Lithuania
DATE OF DEATH November 4, 1999
Place of death Cambridge, Massachusetts