Petter Jacob Bjerve

Petter Jakob Bjerve (27 September 1913 – 12 January 2004) was a Norwegian economist, statistician and politician for the Labour Party. Prominent positions include director of Statistics Norway from 1949 to 1980, Norwegian Minister of Finance from 1960 to 1963, and president of the International Statistical Institute from 1971 to 1975.

He was born in Stjørdal as a son of farmers Petter Jakob Bjerve, Sr. (1869–1928) and Kristine Arnstad (1870–1961). He married Rannveig Bremer, a daughter of Anders H. Bremer.

Bjerve attended secondary school in Orkdal, and was active in Clarté before joining the Labour Party. He studied under Ragnar Frisch at the University of Oslo, and graduated with the cand.oecon. degree in 1941. He studied at The American University, Washington DC from 1938 to 1939 and again in the US with a Rockefeller Foundation grant from 1947 to 1949. At the University of Oslo he worked as a research assistant from 1939 to 1940, teacher from 1941 to 1943 and research fellow from 1945 to 1949. He also held sporadic lectures between 1945 and 1960. He was also a visiting professor at Stanford University from 1954 to 1955. He was also a secretary in Statistics Norway from 1944 to 1945 and assistant secretary in the Norwegian Ministry of Finance. In 1949 he was hired as a director in Statistics Norway. He remained here until 1980. The exception was his period as Minister of Finance in Gerhardsen's Third Cabinet, from 23 April 1960 until his resignation on 4 February 1963. His doctorate thesis Planning in Norway 1947–1953 was finished in 1959, and he defended his thesis for the dr.philos. degree in 1962 while serving as Minister of Finance.

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