Handbook.of.Applied.Economic.Statistics

Preface
Many applied subjects, including economic statistics, deal with the collection of
data, measurement of variables, and the statistical analysis of key relationships and
hypotheses. The attempts to analyze economic data go back to the late eighteenth
century, when the first examinations of the wages of the poor were done in the United
Kingdom, followed by the the mid-nineteenth century research by Engle on food
expenditure and income (or total expenditure). These investigations led to the early
twentieth-century growth of empirical studies on demand, production, and cost functions,
price determination, and macroeconomic models. During this period the statistical
theory was developed through the seminal works of Legendre, Gauss, and
Pearson. Finally, the works of Fisher and Neyman and Pearson laid the foundations
of modern statistical inference in the form of classical estimation theory and hypothesis
testing. These developments in statistical theory, along with the growth of data
collections and economic theory, generated a demand for more rigorous research in
the metholodogy of economic data analysis and the establishment of the International
Statistical Institute and the Econometric Society.