Profile Major Works Resources

Alfred Cowles, 1891-1984.

Portrait of Alfred Cowles

A prominent Colorado businessman, investment analyst and financial economist.  Alfred Cowles became convinced of the importance of the quantitative aspects of economics after the numerous forecasting failures of the 1929 crash. His own studies of stock market data, (esp. 1933), provide an early demonstration of the "random walk" in stock price movements and the beginning of the "Efficient Market Hypothesis". 

In 1930, Alfred Cowles helped founded and funded the Econometric Society and its journal, Econometrica.  He served as treasurer and secretary of the Econometric Society throughout the 30s and 40s.   

In 1932, Alfred Cowles set up the Cowles Commission for Economic Research at Colorado Springs (it later moved to Chicago and then Yale, where it was renamed the "Cowles Foundation"). One of the first Cowles Commission projects was Cowles's own on the development and analysis of monthly and annual stock market indices (1938).

 

  

top1.gif (924 bytes)Top

Major Works of Alfred Cowles

  • "Can Stock Market Forecasters Forecast?", 1933, Econometrica. [pdf]
  • "Some Posteriori Probabilities in Stock market Action" with H. Jones, 1937, Econometrica. [pdf]
  • Common Stock Indexes, 1871-1937, 1938.
  • "Stock Market Forecasting", 1944, Econometrica [cwls]
  • "A Revision of Previous Conclusions Regarding Stock Price Behavior", 1960, Econometrica  [cwls]

 
HET
top1.gif (924 bytes)Top

Resources on Alfred Cowles

 
top1.gif (924 bytes)Top
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

All rights reserved, Gonçalo L. Fonseca