Robert Summers

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For other people named Robert Summers, see Robert Summers (disambiguation).

Robert Summers is an U.S. economist and professor emeritus, University of Pennsylvania, where he taught from 1960. A widely cited early work by Summers is on the small-sample statistical properties of alternate regression estimators where analytical measures are unavailable.

Summers was part of a team at Penn that developed estimates of national income and output across countries which adjust GDP and components for purchasing power parity in the cost of goods and services among different countries. This yielded large differences, some of them systematic, over the common method of using only international exchange rates to convert national products to a common currency. For that work, Summers and Alan Heston were recognized as American Economic Association Distinguished Fellows in 1998.

Summers is related to the following: Paul Samuelson (sibling), Anita Summers (spouse), Kenneth Arrow (brother-in-law), and Larry Summers (son). The relation is that they, like him, all are economists.

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[edit] References

  • http://pwt.econ.upenn.edu/summers.html
  • Irving B. Kravis, Alan W. Heston, and Robert Summers (1978). "Real GDP Per Capita for More Than One Hundred Countries," Economic Journal, 88(350), pp. 215-242. (abstract from JSTOR)
  • Robert Summers (1965). "A Capital Intensive Approach to the Small Sample Properties of Various Simultaneous Equation Estimators," Econometrica, 33(1) , pp. 1-41. (abstract from JSTOR)
  • Robert Summers and Alan Heston (1991). "The Penn World Table (Mark 5): An Expanded Set of International Comparisons, 1950-1988," Quarterly Journal of Economics, 106(2),, pp. 327-368.(abstract from JSTOR)