Henri Theil’s Biography and his Contributions to Economics and Econometrics: An Overview

Abstract

In this chapter we provide a brief account of Professor Henri (Hans) Their’s biographical background and his contributions to scientific literature and the economics profession. This account1 complements material in Chapter 2 by Johan Koerts which provides a more detailed review of Their’s scientific work in three selected areas: the Theory of Economic Policy, Statistics and Econometrics, and the Theory of Information and Economics. Theil’s contributions to the scientific literature are substantial, numerous and consistently of high quality; the annotated bibliography of Their’s research provided in Chapter 5 contains more than 250 entries. In addition, Theil has authored 15 books. A quick scan of Theil’s annotated bibliography would confirm that a review of all of his contributions would be a monumental undertaking, a task we will not attempt in this chapter. Instead, we will focus on a select number of his contributions. This chapter was initially planned as a joint project with Professor J. Koerts; however, his involvement became impractical due to the rest prescribed by his doctors after a heart attack. He is currently recuperating, and hopes soon to resume his teaching and research duties. The author wishes to thank Anton Barten, Kenneth Clements, Johan Koerts and Henri Theil for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this chapter.KeywordsForecast ErrorDemand SystemDemand EquationTemporal AggregationEconomic ForecastThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.