Bitan Nath

Systems of regression equation approaches were developed at the Cowles Commission from the 1950s on, extending the transportation modeling of Tjalling Koopmans. Sewall Wright and other statisticians attempted to promote path analysis methods at Cowles (then at the University of Chicago). University of Chicago statisticians identified many faults with path analysis applications to the social sciences; faults which did not pose significant problems for identifying gene transmission in Wright's context, but which made path methods such as PLS-PA and LISREL problematic in the social sciences. Freedman (1987) summarized these objections in path analyses: "failure to distinguish among causal assumptions, statistical implications, and policy claims has been one of the main reasons for the suspicion and confusion surrounding quantitative methods in the social sciences" (see also Wold's (1987) response). Wright's path analysis never gained a large following among U.S. econometricians, but was successful in influencing Hermann Wold and his student Karl Jöreskog. Jöreskog's student Claes Fornell promoted LISREL in the US.