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Hirsh Zvi Griliches (* September 12, 1930 in Kaunas, Lithuania; † November 4, 1999 in Cambridge, Massachusetts) was an economist at Harvard University.

Live life

Greek was born in Kaunas (Lithuania) in a Jewish, Russian-speaking family. His father Efim Ilyich Griliches (1896-1945) was a worker in a tobacco factory, his mother was Clara Ziv Griliches (?-1945). Greek had a younger sister Ellen Griliches (1933–1996).

During World War II, he and his family were deported to Dachau concentration camp. On 2 May 1945 the camp was liberated by American troops, after which Greeks spent two years with the Zionist youth association Hashomer Hatzair in Munich. In 1947, he attempted to enter Palestine illegally by ship, but was arrested by the British and taken to a camp in Cyprus. During the seven months of imprisonment, he established relationships with academics and learned the English language. After his release, he arrived in Palestine, where he briefly joined the forces of Israel (which did not yet exist as a state) and worked in a kibbutz. In doing so, he learned the Hebrew language and was finally able to enroll in a history study at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem thanks to a university entrance examination.

Greek sister and uncle emigrated to America after the war, so he applied to study agriculture at the University of Berkeley, which he started with a scholarship in 1951. After two years he earned the Bachelor, after another year the Master in Economics and Econometrics. During this time he also met his wife Diane Asseo Griliches, with whom he had two children: Eve Griliches (born 1957) and Marc Griliches (born 1960).

In 1954 he went to the University of Chicago, where he received an assistant professorship in economics in 1956 and obtained a doctorate in 1957. In 1959, Griliches received American citizenship.

Griliches was president of the US Econometric Society in 1975. From 1969 to 1977 was one of the editors of the journal Econometrica. Twice (1961 Stigler Commision, 1996 Boskin Commission) he worked on committees of the US Senate to evaluate the measurement of inflation. In 1993, Sen was elected president of the American Economic Association.

Zvi Griliches died on 4. November 1999 in Cambridge, Massachusetts (USA) at the age of 69 years of pancreatic cancer.

Work

Griliches’ work mostly concerned the economics of technological change, focusing on empirical research on innovation diffusion and the role of R&D, patents and education.

In his 1957 dissertation, Hybrid Corn: An Exploration in the Economics of Technological Change