Statistical Economics Is What Statistical Economists Do : A Review of "Progress Through Regression: The Life Story of the Empirical Cobb–Douglas Production Function," by Jeff E. Biddle

In 1985, when historians of economics had barely begun to examine the field of statistical economics (or econometrics), Carl F. Christ, once a Cowles Commission econometrician, noted in an historical survey that “one of the most famous relations ever estimated by least squares was in ‘A Theory of Production’ by Charles Cobb and Paul Douglas (1928). They proposed their production function b.L^(k).C^(1-k) and estimated k, the labor elasticity of output, at 3/4 for 1899—1922.” (1985, p.42) Almost four decades later, we finally have available a detailed historical account of how the regression run by Cobb and Douglas became one of the most famous one. Jeff E. Biddle has published a noncontroversial historical account of the iconic—although controversial— Cobb-Douglas production function or, more precisely, of the “empirical” Cobb-Douglas production function