It was June 1940. The Second World War was already raging in full swing in its devastation. A young man not yet 20 set out on a 500-mile train journey from the coastal city of Vishakapatnam, India, to Calcutta, the second largest city of the British Empire, after obtaining a first-class first degree in mathematics and with a glimmer of hope of finding a job in the military. The young man was not so lucky; he was deemed too young for the job. However, while in Calcutta, through a chance encounter, he visited the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) founded in 1931 by Professor Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis, a Cambridge-trained physicist. As a last resort he applied for a one-year training program in statistics there. Very promptly he received a positive reply from Professor Mahalanobis admitting him to the Training Section of the ISI from January 1, 1941. This young man was none other than perhaps the most well known statistician in the world today, Calyampudi Radhakrishna Rao (or simply Dr. Rao, as he was universally known to his students and colleagues at the ISI. The “professor” title was reserved for Mahalanobis). Such was the beginning of his spectacular career in statistics, a field chosen as a last resort, and he never looked back.

This interview with Michio Hatanaka is the first in this series given in the East, of which we are very proud. Hatanaka is a pioneer of econometrics in Japan. In the early 1950s he traveled to the United States to study as a graduate student at Vanderbilt University. That step was really unusual in the Japanese profession at that time. His stay in the States was extended to 1966, during which time he taught at Princeton and Rochester. His pathfinding behavior influenced and encouraged many Japanese scholars. Hatanaka started his academic career as a mathematical economist. This may partly explain why his research papers suggest deep economic thought as well as deep understanding of mathematics and statistics. His early contributions to econometrics are concerned with applying the spectral method to various economic problems. These contributions include the associate authorship of Spectral Analysis of Economic Time Series by C. W. J. Granger. His other contributions cover theoretical work on identification and estimation problems for dynamic econometric models, among which Hatanaka's efficient two-step estimator is well known. His research also includes empirical work on the Japanese economy and economic policy, which is relatively less known to people outside of Japan. His attitude toward research has set a standard for Japanese econometricians. His research papers are always a product of deep and full thought, and imbued with his own originality.

His achievements in administration are also impressive. During 1969–1971 and 1979–1980, he was director of the Institute of Social and Economic Research of Osaka University. And during 1983–1985 he was the dean of the faculty of economics at the same university. In addition, he served on the boards of several committees for the Japanese government and the Council of Science of Japan. Among his achievements in administration is the reform of the university entrance examination system, which was notoriously competitive and selective. This was really pathbreaking and led other universities to reform their systems.

This interview, which was given in Japanese, took place on November 20, 1989 in the Economics Department of Osaka University. What follows is a translated version of an edited transcript of that interview. We hope that the readers will share with us the privilege of hearing about the evolution of econometrics as encountered by him since just after the second world war.

George C. Tiao is a well-known figure among statisticians and econometricians. He has made substantial contributions to the fields of Bayesian statistics, environmetrics, time series modeling, intervention analysis, and outlier detection that have had profound and lasting influence. It is fair to say that much of the current research in time series econometrics began with his work or is influenced by his ideas.

Jan Kmenta is the author of the internationally respected text The Elements of Econometrics [1] and co-editor of several books related to econometric model building. His published research over 40 years relates to many facets of econometric theory and practice, including the estimation of production functions, the evaluation of structural econometric models, and estimation in the face of missing data. This work has appeared in the leading journals of the profession. A 1966 paper [11] is of historical interest for being the second econometric model constructed of the Australian economy. In his work, through both constructive contributions and methodological critique, he has always sought to highlight and advance the evidently close connection between economics and econometrics.

Kmenta was born on January 3, 1928, in Prague, the Czech Republic. He was educated at the Jirasek State Gymnasium in Prague (1939–47) and the Czech University of Technology in Prague (1947–49). At the University of Sydney (1952–55), Australia, he graduated with a Bachelor of Economics degree (First Class Honors). He obtained a Master of Arts degree (1959) and a Doctor of Philosophy degree (1964) from Stanford University with a doctoral dissertation entitled “Australian Postwar Immigration: An Econometric Study.” After teaching stints in Australia, Stanford, and Wisconsin, he taught at Michigan State from 1965 to 1973 and at the University of Michigan from 1973 to 1993. He is currently Professor Emeritus of Economics and Statistics, University of Michigan, and Visiting Professor, CERGE-EI, Charles University, Prague.

His various academic awards and prizes include the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Award for Senior U.S. Scientists, the Michigan Economic Society Best Professor Award, the Royal Economic Society Lecturer at the University of Leicester, and the Karel Englis Medal of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. He was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Saarland, Germany, and served as associate editor, Journal of the American Statistical Association (1973–1979 and 1985–1992), associate editor, Review of Economics and Statistics (1975–1992), and associate editor, Metrika (1981–1985). Kmenta was listed as 40th among all economists ranked by the total number of citations (Medoff 1989).

This is an edited transcript of two tape-recorded interviews conducted with Professor Kmenta in Sydney on March 12, 2004, as he visited the University of New South Wales to present the seminar Econometrics: A Failed Science? I am indebted to one of Kmenta's former students, Eric Sowey, for suggesting this project and for his enthusiasm and support throughout.

Joseph B. Kadane, usually known as Jay among his friends and colleagues, is a well-known figure among statisticians and econometricians. He has made substantial contributions to the fields of Bayesian statistics, econometrics, and many applied areas. He is well known for his work in applying statistics to how people make decisions and draw conclusions from data.

Manfred Deistler was born in St. Pölten, Austria, on September 23, 1941, as the younger of two brothers. After attending elementary school and high school (Gymnasium) in St. Pölten, he studied electrical engineering at the University of Technology Vienna, then known as the Technische Hochschule Wien. He graduated with the degree of “Diplom-Ingenieur” (which is roughly equivalent to a master's degree) in 1964. After working in industry for a year and a half, he attended the Institute of Advanced Studies Vienna and earned a diploma in economics from this institution in 1968. During this period he started work on a Ph.D. thesis in applied mathematics at the Technischen Hochschule Wien, obtaining the Ph.D. degree in 1970. After academic appointments at the University of Regensburg as an assistant professor and at the University of Bonn as an associate professor, he was appointed full professor of econometrics at the University of Technology Vienna in 1978, where he has been ever since. He is married to Dr. Gerda Deistler-Russ, and they have a daughter, Gerda.

Manfred Deistler has worked extensively in econometrics and systems identification, which has resulted in numerous papers and an important book with Ted Hannan [1]. He is also a Fellow of the Econometric Society, a Fellow of the Journal of Econometrics, and a Fellow of IEEE (The Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers). He is a corresponding member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. He is or has been a member of the editorial boards of numerous scientific journals, such as Econometrica, Econometric Reviews, Econometric Theory, Empirical Economics, Journal of Econometrics, Journal of Forecasting, Journal of Mathematical Systems and Control, Journal of Multivariate Analysis, Journal of Time Series Analysis, SIAM Journal on Control and Optimization, SIAM Journal on Matrix Analysis and Applications, and Surveys on Mathematics for Industry. He also is a member of the advisory board of Econometric Theory. Manfred Deistler has also been a most important force in establishing econometrics in Austria.

The interview was conducted on February 17, 2006, in Manfred Deistler's office at the University of Technology Vienna in our common native language, German, and later was transcribed into English. The help of Ingmar Prucha in preparing the interview and comments by Hannes Ledolter, Hannes Leeb, and Richard Nickl on a first draft are gratefully acknowledged.

Professor David F. Hendry is interviewed by Neil R. Ericsson.

Over the last three decades, G.S. Maddala (universally known as “G.S.”) has been a familiar name to all doing econometric work. His substantial contributions to the discipline through numerous books and articles single him out as one of the most distinguished econometricians of our time. Because of his extraordinary ability to synthesize and exposit complex methodological results in simple intuitive terms, he has influenced econometric research in other areas of social science also. According to the Social Science Citation Index, G.S. has been one of the top five most cited econometricians during each of the years 1988–1993. He writes econometrics in plain English with a characteristic sense of wit and humor. There cannot be too many empirical economists around the world who have not been influenced by G.S.'s writings in some way or other. Often he has taken a critical look at evolving econometric techniques, particularly those that have no practical applications, and has not hesitated to go against the tide of the profession.

Professor James Tobin is a figure of truly historic significance in the economics profession. He is one of the major developers of modern macroeconomic theory. He has contributed fundamental knowledge to the theory of investment, of consumption, of money and banking, and of economic growth. His theoretical work made possible the development of the capital asset pricing model that has been a central paradigm in modern finance. His work on limited-dependent variable models has started a field within econometrics.