Zvi Griliches, Paul M. Warburg Professor of Economics, Harvard University, has made an outstanding, long term contribution to agricultural economics. He has attained an international renowned reputation for his research on the topics of generation and adoption of new agricultural technology, the measurement of social returns to agricultural research, and the theory and measurement of input quantities and productivity growth in agricultural. In addition he, has been an outstanding teacher and developer of research skills in graduate students in agricultural economics.

The esteem and respect for Griliches is shared widely in the profession. He has been a creative, prolific researcher and contributed very importantly to the literature of agricultural economics. For example, the first successful effort to rigorously measure the rates of return to technical change in agriculture was his 1957 dissertation, "Hybrid Corn: An Exploration in the Economics of Technical Change." All subsequent work on returns in research has followed in path breaking contributions. The study on hybrid corn was followed by a series of studies on the contribution of research, extension and education to agricultural supply and productivity growth. This body of research was recognized by four published research awards by the American Farm Economic Association.

Griliches has an outstanding research record that is highly cited. A very useful collection of his path breaking research contributions appears in his latest book, Technology, Education and Productivity: Essays in Applied Econometrics (Basil Blackwell, 1988). Roughly half of the chapters deal with the agricultural sector of the economy, and these papers have had a major influence on subsequent research in agricultural economics. They serve to document Griliches' work and provide a record of his seminal empirical studies of economic growth. Griliches' hybrid corn study illustrates how to measure technology adoption and indicates how economic forces stimulate the production and diffusion of this technology. The rate-of-return calculations used so widely in the agricultural economics literature can be traced to the hybrid corn study, where the basic supply function shift and the consumers and producers surplus measurements were established.

The "Social Science Citation Index" provides a useful reference to the enduring importance of Griliches' research. Over the last decade his seminal articles, including "Hybrid Corn: An Exploration in the Economics of Technical Change," Econometrica(1957); "The Source of Measured Property Growth: United States Agriculture, 1940-60," J. Polit Econ (1963); and "Research Expenditures, Education and the Aggregate Agricultural Production Function," Agr. Econ. Res. (1964), continue to be cited frequently. Equally impressive is his total citation count, averaging more than 150 per year.

In addition to the earlier direct contribution to the agricultural economics literature, Griliches continues to make an outstanding contribution to agricultural economics through his later research on general issues associated with technical change and measurement of productivity growth. His continuing research on productivity measurement, the economics of education, the economics of research and development, and index number theory is a major importance for research in agricultural economics. And his recent work continues to be widely cited by agricultural economists.

Griliches has also been an outstanding teacher and developer of professionals in the agricultural economics arena. His concerns for sound theoretical foundations underpinning all economic analyses, use of simple but appropriate economic techniques, and careful construction of empirical measures of variables have been instilled in all of his students and close associates. His former students include current leading agricultural economists and notable econometricians.

The contributions of Griliches to research in agricultural economics are pioneering, substantive, and enduring. He has made and continues to make a tremendous contribution to the profession through his own research and the research and leadership of his former students.