Dr. Irving J. Hoch received his B.A. (1945), M.A. (1951), and Ph.D. (1957) from the University of Chicago. Irv’s focus was in the areas of agriculture, urban economics, environmental economics, health economics, along with econometrics. He began his academic career, and earned tenure, at the University of California, Berkeley in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics. He worked there with many distinguished economists including Yair Mundlak and George Kuznets in establishing Berkeley as a leading center for advanced econometric analysis.
Dr. Hoch moved to Resources for the Future, a nonprofit that conducts independent research in economics, as a Senior Fellow in 1967. He was involved in research projects spanning a wide range of projects including studying the effects of population change on transportation issues, how to best use underground urban space, and whether spray cans were really a threat to the Ozone layer. Irv wrote many books and articles. Likely his most famous article is the 1962 “Estimation of Production Function Parameters Combining Time-Series and Cross-Section Data,” which was published in one of the top economics’ journals, Econometrica. He introduced a technique that allowed the combining of time-series and cross-sectional data that is still widely used in statistical analysis and led to him often being called the “father of fixed-effect modeling.”
Dr. Hoch came to UT Dallas in 1985. From the start he reached out to his new colleagues to bring them into his many research projects. Irv had several studies underway with the U.S. Department of Transportation and expanded these into working locally with the North Central Texas Council of Governments. He made sure to include younger UT Dallas faculty in these investigations and to mentor them in pursuing their academic careers.
Probably Irv’s greatest service to UT Dallas was in engaging, and helping, his students. He worked constantly to help his students, both undergraduate and graduate, succeed. He taught for years a required Ph.D. class on microeconomics that was considered a gateway course for the program. Due to the math involved, prior to Dr. Hoch’s teaching it, many students had a very difficult time with it and the attrition rate in the program due to it was high. However, once Irv took the class over things changed dramatically. He developed what he called his “calculus in a nutshell” lecture that reduced the stress from the outset. Additionally, the knowledge that he would spend the time with a student outside of class to help them spread quickly, leading him to be a sought-after teacher – both for graduates and undergraduates. Irv’s efforts were memorialized in his winning both the local Students’ Choice Outstanding Teacher Award as well as the University of Texas System award, the Chancellor’s Council Outstanding Teacher Award. At UT Dallas he was the 1999 winner of the Polycarp Kusch Award and asked to present a university-wide lecture, which he did entitled “Urban population size and the quality of life.”
Irv retired from regular university service in 2003 and became Professor Emeritus in the School of EPPS in 2003. Even after retiring, Irv would come to campus regularly. He died May 25, 2013. The Irving Hoch Endowed Scholarship was established in his name.