Jeff Biddle
Biographic Data
| ID | 3768358 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Jeff Biddle |
| GIVEN NAMES | Jeff |
| FAMILY NAME | Biddle |
| SIGNATURE | BIDDLE J |
| AFFILIATIONS | Michigan State University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 30 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 125 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 30 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1985 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Days of Work over a Half Century
The authors examine work patterns in the United States from 1973 to 2018, with the novel focus on days per week, using intermittent CPS samples and one ATUS sample. Among full-time workers, the incidence of four-day workweeks tripled, adding 7 million four-day workers. Similar growth occurred in the Netherlands, Germany, and South Korea. The rise was not due to changes in demographics or industrial structure. Such schedules are more common among …
Narratives and Empirical Strategies in Zvi Griliches's Early Research
Zvi Griliches was one of the leading econometricians of his generation. His early work involved empirical analyses of the sources of productivity growth in twentieth-century US agriculture, including his dissertation on the diffusion of hybrid corn and his analysis of the long-run growth in fertilizer use by US farmers. In this research Griliches developed theoretical explanations of these phenomena in the form of narratives of rational, profit-s…
Keynes’s Treatise , Statistical Inference, and Statistical Practice in Interwar Economics in the United States
In his Treatise on Probability John Maynard Keynes criticized the tools of statistical inference derived from probability that were coming into use in the early twentieth century, and outlined an alternative approach to statistical inference based on the logic of induction. This essay argues that Keynes’s ideas were embraced and echoed by several leading US economists during the 1920s and 1930s, including those developing and applying the most so…
Statistical Inference in Economics in the 1920s and 1930s
Statistical inference is the process of drawing conclusions from samples of statistical data about things not fully described or recorded in those samples. During the 1920s, economists in the United States articulated a general approach to statistical inference that downplayed the value of the inferential measures derived from probability theory that later came to be central to the idea of statistical inference in economics. This approach is illu…
Exploring the History of Statistical Inference in Economics
The Origins of the CES Production Function
The CES production function was introduced to economics in the 1961 paper "Capital-Labor Substitution and Economic Efficiency," by Kenneth Arrow, Hollis Chenery, Bagicha Minhas, and Robert Solow. The paper had an immediate and substantial impact on economic research, and the CES production function remains an important tool for both theoretical and empirical researchers. I review how the CES production function was derived and used in the paper, …
Theory and Measurement
We identify three separate stages in the post–World War II history of applied microeconomic research: a generally nonmathematical period; a period of consensus (1960s through early 1990s) characterized by the use of mathematical models, optimization, and equilibrium to generate and test economic hypotheses; and (from the late 1990s) a partial abandonment of economic theory in applied work in the “experimentalist paradigm.” We document these chang…
The Introduction of Human Capital Theory into Education Policy in the United States
Prior to 1958, "human capital" was little more than a suggestive phrase in economics and played no role in discussions of education policy. Within five years, there was an active theoretical and empirical human capital research program in economics. Over the same period, the new idea of public spending on education as a form of investment with a demonstrably high rate of return, and the capacity to contribute to the achievement of important natio…
Retrospectives
The concept of "labor hoarding," at least in its modern form, was first fully articulated in the early 1960s by Arthur Okun (1963). By the end of the 20th century, the concept of "labor hoarding" had become an accepted part of economists' explanations of the workings of labor markets and of the relationship between labor productivity and economic fluctuations. The emergence of this concept involved the conjunction of three key elements: the fact …
Documents on Government and the Economy
Retrospectives
At the 1927 meetings of the American Economic Association, Paul Douglas presented a paper entitled "A Theory of Production," which he had coauthored with Charles Cobb. The paper proposed the now familiar Cobb-Douglas function as a mathematical representation of the relationship between capital, labor, and output. The paper's innovation, however, was not the function itself, which had originally been proposed by Knut Wicksell, but the use of the f…
Making Consumers Comfortable
During the air conditioner industry's first four decades, most installations were "commercial comfort" air conditioning systems, purchased by retailers to increase demand for their products. Air conditioning spread unevenly through the commercial sector and across the country. Using data from a variety of sources, I offer a quantitative account of this diffusion, viewed through an interpretive framework that emphasizes differences across geograph…
The Introduction of the Cobb-Douglas Regression and Its Adoption by Agricultural Economists
The first part of this essay reviews Paul Douglas's twenty-year research program of using the Cobb-Douglas function to statistically estimate relationships between inputs and outputs. Emphasis is placed on the evolution of Douglas's own conceptualization of the program, and also the variety of views that arose among economists as to the significance of Douglas's results and, more generally, the potential value of the type of work he was doing. Th…
Explaining the spread of residential air conditioning, 1955–1980
Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology
The series presents materials in two fields, the history of economic thought, and the methodology of economics, both broadly considered. The main annual volumes present articles comparable to what one would find in a journal, except that long pieces are welcome. Also presented are review essays on new works in the two fields, some of which are multiple reviews; plus occasional mini-symposia. The archival supplements present hitherto unpublished m…
Research in the history of economic thought and methodology
The Concept of Applied Economics
The Concept of
Statistical Economics, 1900-1950
Research Article| November 01 1999 Statistical Economics, 1900–1950 Jeff Biddle Jeff Biddle 1 Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google History of Political Economy (1999) 31 (4): 607–651. https://doi.org/10.1215/00182702-31-4-607 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Permissions Search Site Citation Jeff Biddle; Statistical Economics, 1900–1950. History of Political Economy 1 November 1999; 31 (4): 607–…
Social Science and the Making of Social Policy
Beauty, Productivity, and Discrimination
The authors propose models with an ascriptive characteristic generating earnings differentials and causing sectoral sorting, allowing them to distinguish among sources producing such differentials. They use longitudinal data on a large sample of graduates from one law school and measure beauty by rating matriculation photographs. Better-looking attorneys who graduated in the 1970s earned more than others after five years of practice, an effect th…
Institutional Economics
Research Article| December 01 1998 Institutional Economics: A Case of Reproductive Failure? Jeff Biddle Jeff Biddle Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google History of Political Economy (1998) 30 (Supplement): 108–133. https://doi.org/10.1215/00182702-30-Supplement-108 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Jeff Biddle; Institutional Economics: A Case of Reproductive Fai…
Innovation in Russian Industry
The Historicism of John R. Commons’s Legal Foundations of Capitalism
A Citation Analysis of the Sources and Extent of Wesley Mitchell's Reputation
Research Article| June 01 1996 A Citation Analysis of the Sources and Extent of Wesley Mitchell's Reputation Jeff Biddle Jeff Biddle Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google History of Political Economy (1996) 28 (2): 137–169. https://doi.org/10.1215/00182702-28-2-137 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Permissions Search Site Citation Jeff Biddle; A Citation Analysis of the Sources and Extent of Wesl…
The Spread of Economic Ideas
Other| June 01 1992 The Spread of Economic Ideas David Colander and A. W. Coats. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989. xvi, 262 pp. $34.50. Jeff Biddle Jeff Biddle Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google History of Political Economy (1992) 24 (2): 538–540. https://doi.org/10.1215/00182702-24-2-538 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Jeff Biddle; The Spread of E…
Sleep and the Allocation of Time
Using aggregated data for twelve countries, a cross section of microeconomic data, and a panel of households, the authors demonstrate that increases in time in the labor market reduce sleep. Their theory of the demand for sleep differs from standard models of time use by assuming that sleep affects wages by affecting labor market productivity. Estimates of a system of demand equations demonstrate that higher wage rates reduce sleep time among men…
Statistical Economics, 1900-1950
Research Article| November 01 1999 Statistical Economics, 1900–1950 Jeff Biddle Jeff Biddle 1 Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google History of Political Economy (1999) 31 (4): 607–651. https://doi.org/10.1215/00182702-31-4-607 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Permissions Search Site Citation Jeff Biddle; Statistical Economics, 1900–1950. History of Political Economy 1 November 1999; 31 (4): 607–…
Explaining the spread of residential air conditioning, 1955–1980
Purpose and Evolution in Commons's Institutionalism
Research Article| March 01 1990 Purpose and Evolution in Commons's Institutionalism Jeff E. Biddle Jeff E. Biddle Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google History of Political Economy (1990) 22 (1): 19–47. https://doi.org/10.1215/00182702-22-1-19 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Jeff E. Biddle; Purpose and Evolution in Commons's Institutionalism. History of Political Economy 1 March 1990; …
A Citation Analysis of the Sources and Extent of Wesley Mitchell's Reputation
Research Article| June 01 1996 A Citation Analysis of the Sources and Extent of Wesley Mitchell's Reputation Jeff Biddle Jeff Biddle Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google History of Political Economy (1996) 28 (2): 137–169. https://doi.org/10.1215/00182702-28-2-137 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Permissions Search Site Citation Jeff Biddle; A Citation Analysis of the Sources and Extent of Wesl…
The Introduction of Human Capital Theory into Education Policy in the United States
Prior to 1958, "human capital" was little more than a suggestive phrase in economics and played no role in discussions of education policy. Within five years, there was an active theoretical and empirical human capital research program in economics. Over the same period, the new idea of public spending on education as a form of investment with a demonstrably high rate of return, and the capacity to contribute to the achievement of important natio…
The Concept of Applied Economics
The Concept of
Institutional Economics
Research Article| December 01 1998 Institutional Economics: A Case of Reproductive Failure? Jeff Biddle Jeff Biddle Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google History of Political Economy (1998) 30 (Supplement): 108–133. https://doi.org/10.1215/00182702-30-Supplement-108 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Jeff Biddle; Institutional Economics: A Case of Reproductive Fai…
Exploring the History of Statistical Inference in Economics
Retrospectives
The concept of "labor hoarding," at least in its modern form, was first fully articulated in the early 1960s by Arthur Okun (1963). By the end of the 20th century, the concept of "labor hoarding" had become an accepted part of economists' explanations of the workings of labor markets and of the relationship between labor productivity and economic fluctuations. The emergence of this concept involved the conjunction of three key elements: the fact …
The Origins of the CES Production Function
The CES production function was introduced to economics in the 1961 paper "Capital-Labor Substitution and Economic Efficiency," by Kenneth Arrow, Hollis Chenery, Bagicha Minhas, and Robert Solow. The paper had an immediate and substantial impact on economic research, and the CES production function remains an important tool for both theoretical and empirical researchers. I review how the CES production function was derived and used in the paper, …
Retrospectives
At the 1927 meetings of the American Economic Association, Paul Douglas presented a paper entitled "A Theory of Production," which he had coauthored with Charles Cobb. The paper proposed the now familiar Cobb-Douglas function as a mathematical representation of the relationship between capital, labor, and output. The paper's innovation, however, was not the function itself, which had originally been proposed by Knut Wicksell, but the use of the f…
The Introduction of the Cobb-Douglas Regression and Its Adoption by Agricultural Economists
The first part of this essay reviews Paul Douglas's twenty-year research program of using the Cobb-Douglas function to statistically estimate relationships between inputs and outputs. Emphasis is placed on the evolution of Douglas's own conceptualization of the program, and also the variety of views that arose among economists as to the significance of Douglas's results and, more generally, the potential value of the type of work he was doing. Th…
Statistical Inference in Economics in the 1920s and 1930s
Statistical inference is the process of drawing conclusions from samples of statistical data about things not fully described or recorded in those samples. During the 1920s, economists in the United States articulated a general approach to statistical inference that downplayed the value of the inferential measures derived from probability theory that later came to be central to the idea of statistical inference in economics. This approach is illu…
Theory and Measurement
We identify three separate stages in the post–World War II history of applied microeconomic research: a generally nonmathematical period; a period of consensus (1960s through early 1990s) characterized by the use of mathematical models, optimization, and equilibrium to generate and test economic hypotheses; and (from the late 1990s) a partial abandonment of economic theory in applied work in the “experimentalist paradigm.” We document these chang…
Making Consumers Comfortable
During the air conditioner industry's first four decades, most installations were "commercial comfort" air conditioning systems, purchased by retailers to increase demand for their products. Air conditioning spread unevenly through the commercial sector and across the country. Using data from a variety of sources, I offer a quantitative account of this diffusion, viewed through an interpretive framework that emphasizes differences across geograph…
Veblen, Twain, and the Connecticut Yankee
Research Article| March 01 1985 Veblen, Twain, and the Connecticut Yankee: A Note Jeff E. Biddle Jeff E. Biddle Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google History of Political Economy (1985) 17 (1): 97–107. https://doi.org/10.1215/00182702-17-1-97 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon Tools Permissions Cite Icon Cite…
Worker Preference and Market Compensation for Job Risk
Workers choose a job and receive in return a bundle consisting of income and a probability of job injury. The authors view this income- job-risk bundle chosen by the worker as being exchanged in an implici t market. By jointly estimating the market income-job-risk locus and the optimum conditions for utility maximization, they are able to identif y the market locus and parameters of the workers' utility function. In contrast to previous work, the…
Intertemporal Substitution and Hours Restrictions
Sleep and the Allocation of Time
Using aggregated data for twelve countries, a cross section of microeconomic data, and a panel of households, the authors demonstrate that increases in time in the labor market reduce sleep. Their theory of the demand for sleep differs from standard models of time use by assuming that sleep affects wages by affecting labor market productivity. Estimates of a system of demand equations demonstrate that higher wage rates reduce sleep time among men…
Purpose and Evolution in Commons's Institutionalism
Research Article| March 01 1990 Purpose and Evolution in Commons's Institutionalism Jeff E. Biddle Jeff E. Biddle Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google History of Political Economy (1990) 22 (1): 19–47. https://doi.org/10.1215/00182702-22-1-19 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Jeff E. Biddle; Purpose and Evolution in Commons's Institutionalism. History of Political Economy 1 March 1990; …
The Spread of Economic Ideas
Other| June 01 1992 The Spread of Economic Ideas David Colander and A. W. Coats. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989. xvi, 262 pp. $34.50. Jeff Biddle Jeff Biddle Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google History of Political Economy (1992) 24 (2): 538–540. https://doi.org/10.1215/00182702-24-2-538 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Jeff Biddle; The Spread of E…
A Citation Analysis of the Sources and Extent of Wesley Mitchell's Reputation
Research Article| June 01 1996 A Citation Analysis of the Sources and Extent of Wesley Mitchell's Reputation Jeff Biddle Jeff Biddle Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google History of Political Economy (1996) 28 (2): 137–169. https://doi.org/10.1215/00182702-28-2-137 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Permissions Search Site Citation Jeff Biddle; A Citation Analysis of the Sources and Extent of Wesl…
The Historicism of John R. Commons’s Legal Foundations of Capitalism
Social Science and the Making of Social Policy
Beauty, Productivity, and Discrimination
The authors propose models with an ascriptive characteristic generating earnings differentials and causing sectoral sorting, allowing them to distinguish among sources producing such differentials. They use longitudinal data on a large sample of graduates from one law school and measure beauty by rating matriculation photographs. Better-looking attorneys who graduated in the 1970s earned more than others after five years of practice, an effect th…
Institutional Economics
Research Article| December 01 1998 Institutional Economics: A Case of Reproductive Failure? Jeff Biddle Jeff Biddle Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google History of Political Economy (1998) 30 (Supplement): 108–133. https://doi.org/10.1215/00182702-30-Supplement-108 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Jeff Biddle; Institutional Economics: A Case of Reproductive Fai…
Innovation in Russian Industry
Statistical Economics, 1900-1950
Research Article| November 01 1999 Statistical Economics, 1900–1950 Jeff Biddle Jeff Biddle 1 Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google History of Political Economy (1999) 31 (4): 607–651. https://doi.org/10.1215/00182702-31-4-607 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Permissions Search Site Citation Jeff Biddle; Statistical Economics, 1900–1950. History of Political Economy 1 November 1999; 31 (4): 607–…
The Concept of Applied Economics
The Concept of
Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology
The series presents materials in two fields, the history of economic thought, and the methodology of economics, both broadly considered. The main annual volumes present articles comparable to what one would find in a journal, except that long pieces are welcome. Also presented are review essays on new works in the two fields, some of which are multiple reviews; plus occasional mini-symposia. The archival supplements present hitherto unpublished m…
Research in the history of economic thought and methodology
Explaining the spread of residential air conditioning, 1955–1980
Making Consumers Comfortable
During the air conditioner industry's first four decades, most installations were "commercial comfort" air conditioning systems, purchased by retailers to increase demand for their products. Air conditioning spread unevenly through the commercial sector and across the country. Using data from a variety of sources, I offer a quantitative account of this diffusion, viewed through an interpretive framework that emphasizes differences across geograph…
The Introduction of the Cobb-Douglas Regression and Its Adoption by Agricultural Economists
The first part of this essay reviews Paul Douglas's twenty-year research program of using the Cobb-Douglas function to statistically estimate relationships between inputs and outputs. Emphasis is placed on the evolution of Douglas's own conceptualization of the program, and also the variety of views that arose among economists as to the significance of Douglas's results and, more generally, the potential value of the type of work he was doing. Th…
Documents on Government and the Economy
Retrospectives
At the 1927 meetings of the American Economic Association, Paul Douglas presented a paper entitled "A Theory of Production," which he had coauthored with Charles Cobb. The paper proposed the now familiar Cobb-Douglas function as a mathematical representation of the relationship between capital, labor, and output. The paper's innovation, however, was not the function itself, which had originally been proposed by Knut Wicksell, but the use of the f…
Retrospectives
The concept of "labor hoarding," at least in its modern form, was first fully articulated in the early 1960s by Arthur Okun (1963). By the end of the 20th century, the concept of "labor hoarding" had become an accepted part of economists' explanations of the workings of labor markets and of the relationship between labor productivity and economic fluctuations. The emergence of this concept involved the conjunction of three key elements: the fact …
Theory and Measurement
We identify three separate stages in the post–World War II history of applied microeconomic research: a generally nonmathematical period; a period of consensus (1960s through early 1990s) characterized by the use of mathematical models, optimization, and equilibrium to generate and test economic hypotheses; and (from the late 1990s) a partial abandonment of economic theory in applied work in the “experimentalist paradigm.” We document these chang…
The Introduction of Human Capital Theory into Education Policy in the United States
Prior to 1958, "human capital" was little more than a suggestive phrase in economics and played no role in discussions of education policy. Within five years, there was an active theoretical and empirical human capital research program in economics. Over the same period, the new idea of public spending on education as a form of investment with a demonstrably high rate of return, and the capacity to contribute to the achievement of important natio…
The Origins of the CES Production Function
The CES production function was introduced to economics in the 1961 paper "Capital-Labor Substitution and Economic Efficiency," by Kenneth Arrow, Hollis Chenery, Bagicha Minhas, and Robert Solow. The paper had an immediate and substantial impact on economic research, and the CES production function remains an important tool for both theoretical and empirical researchers. I review how the CES production function was derived and used in the paper, …
Economics (21 works) · Computer Science (13 works) · Economic Theory and Institutions (12 works) · Political science (12 works) · Law (10 works) · Positive economics (8 works) · Sociology (8 works) · Download (7 works) · Econometrics (7 works) · Law (7 works)