Denis Sargan

Who was Denis Sargan?

John Denis Sargan was a British econometrician who specialized in the analysis of economic time-series. Sargan made many contributions, notably in instrumental variables estimation, Edgeworth expansions for the distributions of econometric estimators, identification conditions in simultaneous equations models, asymptotic tests for overidentifying restrictions in homoskedastic equations and exact tests for unit roots in autoregressive and moving average models. At the LSE, Sargan was Professor of Econometrics from 1964-84. Sargan was President of the Econometric Society, a Fellow of the British Academy and an member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Sargan is known for having been doctoral advisor to several renowned econometricians. These include Alok Bhargava, David Forbes Hendry, Esfandiar Maasoumi, Peter C.B. Phillips, and Manuel Arellano. His influence on econometric methodology is evident in several fields including in the development of Generalized Method of Moments estimators.