Ragnar Frisch - Economics
1969 – Odd Hassel -
Chemistry 1969 – Ivar
Giæver - Physics 1973 – Trygve Haavelmo -
Economics 1989
Trygve Haavelmo - Nobel Prize Winner in Economics 1989
Trygve Magnus
Haavelmo was born 13 December 1911 in Skedsmo, Norway. Haavelmo earned his
economics degree in 1933 and Ph.D. in 1946. Until the onset of the second world
war Haavelmo worked as a lecturer in statistics at Aarhus University from 1938
to 1939; during the war he worked in the U.S. After a brief period as
department head at the Ministry of Trade and Industry, he was appointed
professor of economics and statistics at the
Department of Economics
at the University of Oslo.
Haavelmo’s doctoral thesis from 1944 – "The Probability Approach in Econometrics" – showed that many of the economics theories of that time were misleading because they failed to adequately account for the innumerable factors influencing actual economic development. Haavelmo introduced mathematical-statistics methods to economic analysis, thus breaking ground for an entirely new area of economics research.
Although he won the Nobel Prize for his work in econometrics, Haavelmo also has other early achievements to his name. He was a pioneer in fields such as economics in developing countries and economics from an environmental perspective.
Trygve Haavelmo died in 1999.
See also The Nobel Institute.
Unit: Information Department, informasjon@uio.no
Document created: 16.05.2000