Hotellingin

Hotellingin is the Finnish-language genitive form used to refer to items named after the American statistician and economist Harold Hotelling. In Finnish scholarship, concepts and results attributed to Hotelling are described with this possessive form, for example by referring to the Hotellingin T-squared distribution or the Hotellingin testi, indicating the association with Hotelling’s work.

Harold Hotelling was a prominent American statistician and economist whose work helped lay the foundations of multivariate statistics and theoretical microeconomics. He is best known for introducing several influential concepts that cross disciplinary boundaries, particularly in statistics, econometrics, and resource economics. His ideas have become standard tools and references in both theoretical development and applied analysis.

Major contributions attributed to Hotelling include the Hotellingin T-squared distribution, a multivariate generalization of the t distribution used in hypothesis testing for mean vectors in multivariate normal samples. He also developed the theory underlying Hotellingin’s T-squared test, a practical method for assessing differences in several correlated variables simultaneously. In economics, Hotelling proposed models of spatial competition, notably the linear city model, which examines how firms locate along a market to account for price competition and customer distribution.

Another key concept is Hotellingin rule in the economics of nonrenewable resources, which posits that the price of exhaustible resources should rise at the rate of interest to reflect scarcity rents over time. This rule has influenced environmental economics, natural resource management, and related policy discussions.

Overall, Hotellingin references reflect a body of ideas that remains influential across statistics and economics, illustrating the enduring impact of Hotelling’s theoretical and methodological contributions.