Victor Edelberg: LSE’s forgotten econometrician

Abstract

Abstract Given Lionel Robbins’s strong scepticism about the value of statistical analysis in economics, it is not surprising that early developments in Econometrics at LSE came from members of the Statistics Department at the School. However, Victor Edelberg, a graduate student in the Economics Department at LSE in the 1930s, published the second article in Econometrica with ‘Econometrics’ in the title and further econometric articles in the Review of Economic Studies. Despite these publications, his work has been forgotten and is not included in the history of econometrics at LSE, nor in the wider history of economics. This study has three objectives: (i) to provide information on the life of Victor Edelberg to explain why, despite his high academic achievements, he failed to establish an academic career, (ii) to evaluate his contributions to econometrics, given the standards of the time, and (iii) to suggest reasons why he would become LSE’s forgotten econometrician.