Abstract :
This paper by Trygve Haavelmo was never submitted to a journal+ The paper has
been transcribed from Haavelmo’s handwritten notes for a seminar given in 1942+
The notes were kept by Haavelmo and were not known to exist by anyone else
until Haavelmo died in 1999 and left his scientific remains to the Department of
Economics, University of Oslo+ The paper was retrieved from these personal
archives by Olav Bjerkholt, who transcribed it from the original handwritten manuscript
and submitted it to Econometric Theory+
The seminar at which Haavelmo spoke 65 years ago is known in the history of
economics literature as the “Marschak seminar”—see Bjerkholt ~2007!, pp+ 775–
837 in this issue, for further historical background and discussion+ The venue for
the seminar alternated between NBER and the New School for Social Research+
The seminar took place less than half a year after Haavelmo had completed and
distributed a mimeographed treatise entitled “On the Theory and Measurement of
Economic Relations,” which is the first version of his better known “The Probability
Approach in Econometrics” published in Econometrica in 1944+ The Seminar
announcement from the secretary of the NBER outlines the content of the
seminar and is given subsequently, before the text of Haavelmo’s seminar+
Among those who attended Haavelmo’s seminar in 1942 was Kenneth Arrow,
then a student of economics and statistics+ He has kindly written the personal
memoir that follows+
