Economist, born in Omaha, Nebraska, USA. After teaching at the universities of Chicago (19447) and Michigan (194954), he became a professor at the University of Pennsylvania (1958). He is noted for the development of large multi-equation econometric models used to forecast the performance of an economy. These mathematical models simultaneously estimate hundreds of equations regarding economic activity such as consumer spending, public and private investment, exports, imports, capital flows, and monetary supplies. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1980.
For his work in creating computer models to forecast economic trends in the field of econometrics at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, he was awarded the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel in 1980. Specifically "for the creation of economic models and their application to the analysis of economic fluctuations and economic policies."Development of business forecasting model
Professor Klein is a graduate of Los Angeles City College, where he learned calculus; There he built a model of the United States economy to forecast the development of business fluctuations and to study the effects of government economic-political policy. After World War II Klein used his model to correctly predict, against the prevailing expectation, that there would be an economic upturn rather than a depression.
At the University of Michigan, Klein developed enhanced macroeconomic models, in particular the famous Klein-Goldberger model with Arthur Goldberger, which was based on foundations laid by Professor Jan Tinbergen of the Netherlands, later winner of the first economics prize in 1969. In England, Klein developed a model of the United Kingdom economy at the University of Oxford, before returning to the US in 1958 to join the Department of Economics at the University of Pennsylvania.
Return to America at Wharton
In the early 1960s Klein became the leader of the major "Brookings-SSRC Project", to construct a detailed econometric model to forecast the short-term development of the American economy.
Later in the 60's, Klein constructed the "Wharton Econometric Forecasting Model". This model, considerably smaller than the Brookings model, achieved a very good reputation for its analysis of business conditions, used to forecast fluctuations including national product, exports, investments, and consumption, and to study the effect on them of changes in taxation, public expenditure, oil price, etc. The aim of this was to produce the world's first global economic model, linking models of many of the world's countries so that the effect of changes in the economy of one country are reflected in other countries.
Later career
In 1976 Klein was coordinator of Jimmy Carter's economic task force before the US presidential election.
In recent years, he has been constructing short range "current quarter models" that use current economic indicators to get a handle on the rate of economic growth during the current and next quarter. This represents a very different tradition from his earlier model building and applications
Publications
Klein's publications include:
An essay on the theory of economic prediction (With Jaime Marquez, ????) ISBN 0-8410-2005-1 Economic Fluctuations in the United States, 1921-41 (1950) An Econometric Model of the United States, 1929-52 (with AS Goldberger, 1955) The Keynesian Revolution (1946) ISBN 0-333-08131-5 The Wharton Econometric Forecasting Model (with MK Evans, 1967) A Textbook of Econometrics (1973) ISBN 0-13-912832-8 The Brookings Model (With Gary Fromm. 1975) Econometric Model Performance (1976) An Introduction to Econometric Forecasting and Forecasting Models (1980) ISBN 0-669-02896-7 Econometric Models As Guides for Decision Making (1982) ISBN 0-02-917430-9 The Economics of Supply and Demand 1983 Economics, Econometrics and The LINK (with M Dutta, 1995) ISBN 0-444-81787-5
User Comments Add a comment…