Max O. Lorenz

Max Otto Lorenz ( born September 19, 1876 in Burlington, Iowa; † July 1, 1959 in Sunnyvale, California ) was an American statistician and economist. In 1905 he published an essay on income distribution, in which he introduced his namesake Lorenz curve.

Lorenz came as one of three German emigrants to the world. His father was a successful businessman. Lawrence completed his undergraduate studies in 1899 with a BA from the University of Iowa. In 1906 he received his doctorate at the University of Wisconsin in the economy. The title of his dissertation was Economic Theory of Railroad Council.

After that, he worked for several years as a statistician in government agencies in Wisconsin, for the Census Bureau, and later for the railway authority in Washington, DC and finally, from 1911, the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC). As of 1920, the director of the Bureau of Statistics was. 1916/17 Lorenz was chairman of the "Eight -Hour Commission ," which reviewed the implementation of the legislation on the eight-hour day in the USA.

1911 married Nellie Florence Lawrence Sheets, the daughter of a lawyer from Columbus ( Ohio). He had three children with her.

Lorenz's work in the ICC mainly consisted of the collection and analysis of data on transport by bus, train and boat, which were used to determine tariffs and for improving the operation. He was with three other economists, the author of a popular textbook.

Today, however, he is mainly written during the promotion of his essay on the distribution of income due to known.

Works

• MO Lorenz: Methods of measuring the concentration of wealth. In: Publications of the American Statistical Association. Vol 9 = New Series No. 70, 1908, ZDB - ID 963859-3, pp. 209-219.
• Richard T. Ely, Thomas A. Adams, Max O. Lorenz, Allyn A. Young: Outlines of Economics. Macmillan, New York, NY, 1908.