Econometric computing by hand

Abstract

The electronic computer was first created in the 1940s, but was expensive to purchase and slow to spread. Throughout the 1950s and even into the earlier 1960s, electromechanical desk calculators were generally the only means whereby economists could compute regression parameters or solve econometric models. Some of the trials and tribulations of econometric computing by hand are described in this brief memoir of the context in which the Klein-Goldberger model was developed and used.