Oskar Morgenstern · 1962
Dated July 9, 1962, Morgenstern’s signed preface introduces a research memorandum containing two advance book chapters. Its purpose is to establish their relation to a forthcoming revision and acknowledge the work behind their preparation:
The following two papers are consecutive chapters from the completely revised and rewritten second edition of my book, On the Accuracy of Economic Observations.
The description presents the papers as consecutive parts of a larger reconstruction, giving their publication a provisional place in the book’s development. Morgenstern notes that the first edition appeared at Princeton University Press in 1950 and had been out of print since 1952. The revision was approaching production:
The manuscript of the revised edition will be in the printer's hands within a few weeks.
The second paragraph shifts from publication history to collaborative production, thanking Econometric Research Program colleagues Nevins D. Baxter, John G. Cragg, Morton D. Davis, and Dorothy D. Green, and crediting Lois A. Crooks with typing. The preface’s relevance is documentary: it situates the advance chapters within the revised book and records their institutional support. It supplies no substantive thesis about statistical accuracy or account of the chapters’ arguments; those cannot be reconstructed from this selected text.
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