R.M. Williams, 88; Economic Forecaster
Robert M. Williams, a retired business economics professor and founder of the UCLA Anderson Forecast, died Thursday of heart failure. He was 88.
Williams, who served on UCLA’s business school faculty for more than 30 years, opened the economic forecasting operation now known as the UCLA Anderson Forecast in 1952. The center remains one of the nation’s few university-based economic forecasting groups, and its predictions are followed by business analysts across the country.
Born in New York on May 4, 1913, Williams earned degrees from Pomona College and UCLA and then studied at Harvard University, where he received his doctorate in economics in 1950. He was one of the first academics to teach economic forecasting and earned such academic awards as the UCLA Alumni Assn. University Service Award and the Distinguished Research Award.
“In 1952, Mr. Williams took a road not traveled,” Edward E. Leamer, current director of the forecast, said in a statement. “He was among the very first to recognize the need to produce an annual forecast of the U.S. economy. Fifty years later, the enterprise he founded is still going strong.”
Williams, who lived in Santa Monica, is survived by his wife, Vera, a retired accountant, and a son, Ken, a local architect.
A memorial service will be held at 2 p.m. Sunday in the California Room at the Faculty Center on the UCLA campus.
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