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Why Economists Ignored the Method of Least Squares

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Authors

Kim, Jinbang

Issue Date
1991-10
Publisher
Institute of Economic Research, Seoul National University
Citation
Seoul Journal of Economics, Vol.4 No.4, pp. 331-343
Keywords
Merrimanunspecific funtion
Abstract
The method of least squares was proposed in 1805 and soon became a standard tool in astronomy and geodesy. But it is not until the mid-twentieth century that the same method could be found in the ordinary toolbox of economists. The delayed adoption is explained by the intended scope of application of the method in relation to the nature of economics as the nineteenth century economists understood it. Given a parametric relation between a few variables and their inaccurate measures, scientists employed the method to obtain the "most probable" value of parameters. By contrast, it was believed that an economic relation contained so many variables and would never be deduced in a parametric form. As long as economists adhered to the Newtonian deduction, they would not adopt the method of least squares which they considered only as a way of combining inaccurate measures.
ISSN
1225-0279
Language
English
URI
https://hdl.handle.net/10371/942
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