Haavelmo, Trygve, << HAHV uhl mo,TRIHG vuh >> (1911-1999), a Norwegian economist, undertook pioneering work in developing statistical techniques for economic forecasting. Haavelmo’s work meant that more accurate estimates of economic relationships could be made than before, and governments could now make economic policies on the basis of better predictions about their national economies. Haavelmo was awarded the Nobel Prize for economic sciences in 1989.
Haavelmo was born on Dec. 13, 1911, in Skedsmo, Norway, near Oslo. He entered Oslo University in 1930 and studied economics. He went to the United States at the beginning of World War II (1939-1945) and worked at the University of Chicago. After the war, Haavelmo returned Oslo University and was its professor of economics from 1948 until 1979. In 1954 he wrote a pioneering study in development economics, A Study in the Theory of Economic Evolution. This book examines why some countries’ economies fail to develop. Haavelmo’s other influential work was A Study in the Theory of Investment (1960), which looks at how financial investments develop in a country (see Investment ). This theoretical work inspired many later practical studies. Another area in which he produced original work was in the field of environmental economics, relating economics to changes in the environment. Haavelmo died on July 26, 1999.
