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Econometrics, as a total subject, is older than macroeconometric model building and deserves a separate historical inquiry. Early investigations of demand–supply functions, income distributions, family budgets, cost, and production functions have been the subject of historical study. The joint founding of the Econometric Society and the Cowles Commission for Research in Economics represented the beginnings of major steps forward from the 1930s. In addition to some of the papers presented at the Cowles Foundation anniversary party, there have been some separate studies by scholars from the group. More than ten years ago, a seminar was organized to compare models to appreciate their differences and to look for commonalities. In a first phase, the Model Comparison Seminar looked at distributions of multipliers across macroeconomic models, and the outcome of common applications of control theory. This chapter reviews briefly the focal points of interest during the historical period of macroeconometric model development.

Awards may honour and induce performance. There are many different academic awards, ranging from the Nobel Prizes to best paper awards, and to awards for young scholars and rising stars. The Synthetic Control Method allows us to show empirically that the performance of recipients of the well-known John Bates Clark Medal (given by the American Economic Association to a scholar under the age of 40 ‘who is judged to have made the most significant contribution to economic thought and knowledge’) subsequently increases. Clark Medallists raise their publication activity and the work they had previously published is cited considerably more often (in line with a status effect). The same effects can be observed when researchers are elected as Fellows of the Econometric Society, also a prestigious honour.

Chapter 7 discusses two early attempts to measure utility empirically. In 1926, Norwegian Ragnar Frisch applied an econometric approach to measure the marginal utility of money. Following a suggestion from economist Henry Schultz, in 1930, American psychologist Louis Leon Thurstone conducted a laboratory experiment to elicit the indifference curves of an individual. Notably, both Frisch and Thurstone intended measurement in the unit-based sense. Most commentators of the 1930s and early 1940s judged the assumptions underlying both Frisch’s and Thurstone’s utility measurements highly problematic and therefore remained skeptical about the significance of their respective measurements. Moreover, after the mid-1930s and the completion of the ordinal revolution, most utility theorists lost interest in measuring utility in a more than ordinal sense. Among the most vocal critics of Thurstone’s experiment were W. Allen Wallis and Milton Friedman, then two young economists and statisticians who had studied at the University of Chicago.