Papers of Otto Eckstein

Otto Eckstein (1927-1984), a German American economist, was the Paul W. Warburg Professor of Economics at Harvard University (1963-1984) and a member of President Lyndon B. Johnson's Council of Economic Advisers (1964-1966). Eckstein worked on such topics as cost-benefit analysis, inflation theory, and public finance. Eckstein, with entrepreneur Donald B. Marron, founded Data Resources Inc., the largest non-governmental distributor of economic data in the world. Working with Eckstein's theory of core inflation, DRI developed large-scale macro-econometric models to make economics more useful to economists, business executives, and others.

Eckstein was born in Ulm, Germany, on August 1, 1927. Threatened by the antisemitic policies of the National Socialist regime, Eckstein's family fled to England in 1938, then settled in the United States in 1939. Eckstein became a naturalized American citizen in 1945. After serving in the United States Army Signal Corps in 1946 and 1947, Eckstein majored in economics at Princeton University (AB 1951) and Harvard University (AM 1952; PhD 1955). His research focused on the application of economics to policy issues, with an emphasis on wages, prices, and productivity. Eckstein began his teaching career at Harvard as a teaching fellow in 1952, becoming a full professor in 1963. Eckstein was the principal instructor in introductory economics for fifteen years, lecturing to more Harvard undergraduates than had any professor in the history of the university.

Aside from his teaching at Harvard, Eckstein's government service included a tenure as technical director of the Joint Economic Committee of the United States Congress in 1959 and 1960, preparing a study of employment, growth, and price levels. From 1964 to 1966, he was a member of the Council of Economic Advisers, advising President Lyndon B. Johnson on economic policy. On the Council, Eckstein helped to formulate wage-price guidelines and to develop economic programs for the Great Society, a set of domestic programs in the United States launched by President Johnson in 1964. In 1968, Eckstein and Donald Marron founded Data Resources Inc., which pioneered in computerized economic forecasting. When the company went public in 1976, it had fifty-two clients of the nation's 100 largest industrial corporations. In 1979, McGraw-Hill bought the company for $103 million. Eckstein's publications include Core Inflation (1981), The DRI Model of the U.S. Economy (1983), and Public Finance (1979).

Eckstein was a fellow of the American Statistical Association, the Econometric Society, and the National Association of Business Economists. He served as director of the Burroughs Corporation from 1975 to 1980, as vice president of the American Economic Association in 1981, and as president of the Eastern Economic Association in 1984.

Eckstein married Harriett Mirkin (born about 1934) in 1954. They had three children: Warren Matthew, Felicia, and June)