Profile Major Works Resources

Hendrik S. Houthakker, 1924-2008.

Dutch economist at Harvard.

Born and raised in Amsterdam, Holland, Hendrik (often spelled Hendrick) S. Houthakker was of Jewish origin, and narrowly survived the Nazi occupation of Holland. Houthakker went on to obtaine his Ph.D at University of Amsterdam in 1949, and promptly joined the department of applied economics at Cambridge University.  It was here that he developed his famous 1950 article, introducing the Strong Axiom of Revealed Preference (SARP) society.   He proceeded to the United States in 1952, as a researcher at the Cowles Commission, where he developed his famous study with Pais on family budgets in 1955.  From there, Houthakker joined the faculty at Stanford in 1954.

Houthakker moved to Harvard in 1960, where he would stay for the remainder of his career.  For over two decades after 1971, Houthakker was the sole editor of the Review of Economics and Statistics.

Houthakker was a frequent served an advisor  to the US government. He was on the Council of Economic Advisors under presidents Johnson and Nixon, from 1968 to 1971.

Houthakker received the John Bates Clark medal of the AEA in 1963.

 

  

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Major Works of Hendrick Houthakker

  • "Revealed Preference and the Utility Function", 1950, Economica
  • "The Pareto Distribution and the Cobb-Douglas Production Function in Activity Analysis", 1955, RES [cwls]
  • The Analysis of Family Budgets, with S.J. Prais, 1955.
  • "Can Speculators Forecast Prices?", 1957, REStat [cwls]
  • "The Scope and Limits of Futures Trading", 1959, in M. Abramovitz et al., Allocation of Economic Resources [cwls]
  • "The Capacity Method of Quadratic Programming", 1960, Econometrica
  • "Systematic an Random Elements in Short-Term Price Movements", 1961, AER [cwls]
  • Consumer Demand in the United States, with L.D. Taylor, 1966.
  • Economic Policy for the Farm Sector, 1967.
  • "Normal Backwardation", 1968, in Wolfe, editor, Value, Capital and Growth
  • "Income and Price Elasticities in World Trade", with S.P. Magee, 1969, REStat
  • The World Price of Oil: A medium term analysis, 1976.
  • "Growth and Inflation: Analysis by industry", 1979, BPEA.

 
HET

 
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Resources on Hendrik S. Houthakker

  • Cowles Commission: Houthakker's discussion papers (1952-1955)
  • "In Memoriam: Hendrik Houthakker"  by Econometric Society [pdf]
  • Houthakker's obituary at Washington Post, 2005
  • Houthakker's obituary in Boston Globe
  • "Hendrik S. Houthakker" tribute at Harvard Gazette, 2009
  • Houthakker tribute at New Netherlands Institute
  • Wikipedia

 

 
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