Victor Zarnowitz

Who was Victor Zarnowitz?

Victor Zarnowitz was a leading scholar on business cycles, indicators, and forecast evaluation. Dr. Zarnowitz was Senior Fellow and Economic Counselor to The Conference Board. He was Professor Emeritus of Economics and Finance, Graduate School of Business, The University of Chicago, and Research Associate, National Bureau of Economic Research.

In 1939, he fled Poland to escape the Nazi invasion, but was imprisoned by the Soviet Russians and worked at a labor camp in Siberia. Dr. Zarnowitz earned his Ph.D. in economics at the University of Heidelberg in Germany in 1951. He came to the United States in 1952. In 1959 he moved to Chicago and became a professor at the University of Chicago.

He was a Fellow of the National Association of Business Economists, Fellow of the American Statistical Association, Honorary Fellow of the International Institute of Forecasters, and Honorary Member of the Center for International Research on Economic Tendency Surveys. In 2001, he received the William F. Butler Memorial Award from the New York Association for Business Economists. His numerous papers and books include An Appraisal of Short-Term Economic Forecasts, The Business Cycle Today, Orders, Production, and Investment, and Business Cycles: Theory, History, Indicators, and Forecasting. His most recent papers are "Has the Business Cycle Been Abolished?", "Theory and History Behind Business Cycles", and "The Old and the New in U.S. Economic Expansion".