The first two chapters of Trygve Haavelmo’s Probability Approach provide a very rich epistemological framework for understanding what is involved in finding laws outside the laboratory. Even though these laws will be inexact, a framework was developed to specify for which conditions laws could...

Econometricians have from the start considered historical knowledge of their own discipline as reflexive knowledge useful for delineating their discipline, that is, for setting its disciplinary boundaries with respect to its aims, its methods, and its scientific values. As such, the histories...

This article aims to show the mathematical contexts out of which emerged Solow's 1957 article “Technical Change and the Aggregate Production Function.” In particular, it seeks to provide some understanding of its most striking feature, namely, the highly aggregate level on which technical...

Trygve Haavelmo's methodological manifesto “The Probability Approach in Econometrics” not only laid down the paradigm for the research pursued at the Cowles Commission, but also sets out a strategy for measurement outside the laboratory. His conceptualization of “passive observation” is...

This article provides a history of the treatment of observational errors where conditions cannot be controlled to reduce inaccuracies, more specific, a history of the discussion of errors in social statistics. The main focus is on Oskar Morgenstern’s atypical position in this discussion. In...