Tiberiu (also: Tibor) Schatteles Ph.D. - Presently retired from the Canadian Federal Civil Service
Tibor was born in Timisoara/Temesvár, attended local Jewish schools on all levels until high-school graduation (bacalaureat), and continued with university studies first in Cluj/Kolozsvár and later in Bucharest. He started with philosophy (Cluj) but then also economics, and specialized in foreign trade (Bucharest). The latter fact landed him in his first full-time job in Bucharest at the Chamber of Foreign Trade where he advanced in the early 1950's to head of the agricultural market research team within the Market Research Division. This gave him the opportunity to switch back to an old love: mathematical economics and to leave the Chamber for the Economic Research Institute (Institutul de Cercetari Economice) where he became the first in the country to practice and publish in the field of econometrics. After 1956 he was suspended from his job for political reasons but re-appointed after the detente in the early 1960s. Then he started publishing in his field, including materials known and appreciated abroad. He established professional contacts with professor W.W. Leontieff (Nobel Prize for economics) and the co-founder of mathematical game theory Oskar Morgenstern of Princeton. Both these scientists had been of great importance in his career. In 1973 he escaped to the West spending first some time in Rome then later, in 1974, he was Senior Associate Member of St. Anthony's College in the University of Oxford. He left England for Canada, following his wife Agnes, née Borgida, also from Timisoara. His first appointment in Canada was at Université Laval, Québec, where he was teaching Théories Mathématiques de la Croissance Économique. He left Quebec following a very advantageous offer of a senior professional position at the statistical office of the Canadian government while still continuing to teach for awhile at Laval and then also, part time, at Carleton University.
Of the great number of publications the following four groups are to be mentioned:
[1] Articles and papers in the field of mathematical economics connected to problems of epistemology in which the author's "ideologically suspect" ideas were hidden in mathematical cryptography. Several of these writings were included in a recently published collection to be mentioned later. Some of these were in English of which three should be quoted here:
(i) The Rational and the Empirical in Econometric Models, a Rationalistic Approach. - Recherches sur la Philosophie des Science, Édition de l'Académie de la République Socialiste de Roumanie, 1970. P. 601-613. Paper offered at the International Conference on the Philosophy of Science held in Bucharest in 1970.
(ii) Macroeconomic Models, Economic Growth, and the Reality of Planning Practice. - Paper read at the International Symposium "National Economic Modelling", Novosibirsk, July 22-27, 1970 - in Revue Roumaine des Sciences Sociales - Série de Science Économique, Tome 14, No.2, 1970.
(iii) The von Neumann Growth Model and Socialist Planning, in Zeitschrift für Nationalökonomie, Suppl. !, 1971, Springer Verlag, 1971. (This was a paper sent by mail to a "von Neumann conference" in Vienna where the author couldn't attend).
[2] Several articles and books on the theory of games in which the author develops a theory of games in which a "forecaster" also participates. This has been amply discussed in a correspondence with prof. Morgenstern.
A selection from the publications mentioned under [1] and [2] has been recently (September 2007) published in Bucharest by the Editura Tritonic in a volume titled:
ECONOMIE, EPISTEMOLOGIE SI PREVIZIUNE
which contains an interview with the author relating the curious history of some of these materials.
[3] Several articles and papers on econometrics, and most importantly the book: "Metode econometrice moderne"
(Modern Econometric Methods) first in Romanian in 1971, then in Russian, 1975, and finally once again in Romanian in Chisinau-Moldova, Editura Universitas, 1992, without the publisher having ever asked for the author's permission. Neither did they answer his letters. In spite of that, the author is very flattered.
[4] Many papers, mostly on monetary and price theory, included in Canadian government publications. Several of these studies originate with the author's position as head of the "Price analysis task force". The retired author is now working on a synthesis of these works to be published.
Parallel to his professional and academic jobs, Tibor Schatteles has finished a work on "The Jews of Timisoara in Historic Perspective" (waiting to be published), and has also "almost" finished a set of literary essays which may as well be titled "A la rechèrche de mes lectures perdues", since he doesn't play golf.