JACOB MARSCHAK (1898–1977)
Director: January 1943 – July 1948
Ph.D., University of Heidelberg, 1922; M.A. by decree from the University of Oxford,
1935
Jacob Marschak studied at the Technological Institute at Kiev, and at the Universities
of Berlin and Heidelberg. Marschak accepted appointment as research director of the Cowles
Commission and as professor of economics in the University of Chicago in January 1943. His
past teaching positions include assistant professor at the University of Heidelberg,
1930–33; Chichele lecturer in economics at All Souls College, Oxford University,
1933–35; reader in statistics and director of the Institute of Statistics, Oxford
University, 1935–39; professor of economics, Graduate Faculty of Social and Political
Science, New York, 1939–42. He is a Fellow of the Econometric Society, served as
vice-president in 1944 and 1945 and as president in 1946, and continued on the Council of
the Society through 1949. He served on the executive committee of the Conference on
Research on Income and Wealth from 1943 to 1947 and was its chairman in 1948. He was a
vice-president of the American Statistical Association, a director of its Chicago Chapter,
a collaborating editor of the Journal of the American Statistical Association, and
was elected Fellow of that Association in 1947. Marschak was elected a member of the
Inter-national Statistical Institute in 1948. He served on the Committee on Social Aspects
of Atomic Energy of the Social Science Research Council in 1946–49 and was
co-director of the study on economic aspects of atomic power. He served as a member of the
organizing and editorial committees of the Universities–National Bureau Conference on
Business Cycles Research in the fall of 1949. He has been a member of the editorial board
of Econometrica, 1943–46, and Human Relations since 1948, a member of
the editorial board of Metroeconomica since 1951, and cooperates in the editing of
the Journal of Political Economy. During the winter quarter of 1948 Marschak was
visiting professor at the National University of Mexico and at the University of Buffalo.
Marschak resigned as director of research in June 1948, but continued as senior research
associate of the Commission and as professor of economics at the University of Chicago. In
1950 he became a consultant of the RAND Corporation and a member of an inter-society
committee on the mathematical training of social scientists. In 1951 he became principal
investigator of the project on decision-making under uncertainty; he participated in the
Colloquium on Risk and Uncertainty convened by the Centre National de la Recherche
Scientifique, Paris. Since Marschak joined the Cowles Commission, he has published
articles and papers in American Economic Review, Bulletin of Atomic Scientists,
Econometrica, Journal of Political Economy, Mathematical Reviews, Metroeconomica, and Review
of Economics and Statistics. He is author of Die Lohndiskussion, 1931; author
of Die Elastizetat der Nachfrage, 1931; co-author of Kapitalbildung, 1936;
co-editor of Management in Russian Industry and Agriculture, and author of the
Introduction, 1944; co-author of Economic Aspects of Atomic Power, 1950; wrote the
introduction to Statistical Inference in Dynamic Economic Models, 1950; and is a
contributor to Studies in Econometric Method (forthcoming).
[Abstracted from A Twenty Year Research
Report 1932–1952]
Cowles Commission/Foundation Publications
by Jacob Marschak |
