Frisch, Ragnar Anton Kittil

Born Mar. 3, 1895, in Oslo; died there Jan. 31, 1973. Norwegian economist. Member of the Norwegian Academy of Sciences (1931).

Frisch was educated at the University of Oslo. He taught there from 1925 to 1965, and he was director of research of the university’s Institute of Economics from 1931 to 1965. He lectured on economics at Yale University in 1930 and at the Sorbonne in 1933.

Frisch belonged to the mathematical school of bourgeois political economy. He contributed to the development of econometrics and the methodology of mathematical economic analysis, including the measurement of the functions of utility and productivity and the construction of indexes; his definition of econometrics as a synthesis of economic theory, statistics, and mathematics is shared by many bourgeois economists. Frisch was one of the first to delineate the respective spheres of macroeconomic and microeconomic analysis; his dynamic macroeconomic model of cycles was based on the principle of acceleration.

Much of Frisch’s work was in the area of economic programming. His proposed methods and models of economic development and principles to be applied in establishing national accounting systems have been extensively implemented in practice by budgetary and statistical agencies in Norway and in various other capitalist countries. Frisch won a Nobel Prize in 1969.