Schultz, Henry

Henry Schultz, (born Sept. 4, 1893, Szarkowszczyzna, Pol., Russian Empire—died Nov. 26, 1938, San Diego, Calif., U.S.), early Polish-born American econometrician and statistician.

Schultz received his Ph.D. from Columbia University (1926), where he studied under such economists as Edwin Seligman and Wesley C. Mitchell, but his most important influence was the econometrician Henry L. Moore, under whom he completed a pioneering econometric study of demand. Schultz was a professor at the University of Chicago from 1926 until his death.

At Chicago he examined the data relating to large numbers of commodities in an effort to synthesize economic theory with empirical data. He made several contributions to statistical theory and econometric methods, especially regression techniques. His The Theory and Measurement of Demand (1938), a survey of statistical methods and their applications, combined economic theory, particularly the mathematical work of Léon Walras and Vilfredo Pareto, with econometrics.