Number & MeasureGreek → English
Econometrics
/ɪˌkɒnəˈmɛtrɪks/noun
The application of statistical methods to economic data in order to test theories and estimate relationships.
The Greek roots
οἰκονομία
oikonomía
household management
μέτρον
métron
measure
Literally: “measurement of household management”
The story of the word
Ragnar Frisch coined the term in 1926, in Norwegian first, and it entered English with the founding of the Econometric Society in 1930 and its journal Econometrica. The οἶκος at the root is a household, and νόμος its law, so the discipline's name still says household management several thousand years after economies stopped fitting in one. Frisch shared the first Nobel prize in economics in 1969.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 1930s
Same family
economyecologygeometrybiometrics
In a sentence
Her econometrics finds no effect once you control for local wages.