Ragnar Frisch, in full Ragnar Anton Kittil Frisch, (born March 1895, Oslo, Norway—died January 31, 1973, Oslo), Norwegian econometrician and economist who was a joint winner (with Jan Tinbergen) of the 1969 Nobel Prize for Economics.
Frisch was educated at the University of Oslo (Ph.D., 1926), where he was appointed to a specially created professorship in 1931, a post he held until his retirement in 1965. He was a pioneer of econometrics—the application of mathematical models and statistical techniques to economic data—and coined this and many other economics terms. One of the founders of the Econometric Society, he also was the editor of Econometrica for 21 years. In an article on business cycles, Frisch was likely the first person to have referred to the study of individual firms and industries as “microeconomics.” Moreover, he referred to the study of the aggregate economy as “macroeconomics.”
Frisch is particularly famous for the development of large-scale econometric modeling linked to economic planning and national income accounting. Through this type of work, he helped many academically trained economists gain entry into key civil service positions. Frisch was involved with a range of macroeconomic topics, including the trade cycle, production theory, consumer behaviour, and statistical theory. Many of the papers he published are regarded as classics.
Key works
1926 Quantitative formulation of the laws of economic theory, On a problem in pure economics
1927 The relationship between primary investment and reinvestment
1929 Correlation and scatter in statistical variables, Statics and dynamics in economic theory
1933 Propagation Problems and Impulse Problems in Dynamic Economics
Link to Frisch at the History of Economic Thought Website
The Ideas of Economists 