As a result, his work is referenced in publications in medicine, political science, insurance underwriting, antitrust litigation, and energy issues, to list but a few.

[8] Initially econometrics was centered on providing essentially standalone solutions to particular problems e.g., a useful analytically and econometrically tractable production function such as the Cobb-Douglas, a formal development of the computationally expedient iterative estimation procedure, and a simple way to estimate the parameters of a mathematically complex function (to characterize the Cobb-Douglas, generalized regression, and CES publication examples cited above).

As econometrics matured from a collection of clever solutions for specific problems into its own major field of research, econometricians worked to integrate what was known into a systematic whole greater than the sum of its parts.

The book embodies the essence of Kmenta's approach to both econometrics and statistics which is perhaps best – if informally—characterized as "It's all very easy once you really understand it – don't bother memorizing anything, just do the algebra and think about what you are doing and why.

He left the university in September 1949 following the 1948 communist coup in Czechoslovakia, escaping to West Germany where he lived in refugee camps for more than a year.

At this time, Sydney University was offering evening courses for servicemen in which Kmenta enrolled, joining other Czechs taking classes while working day jobs.

At Stanford he was influenced by notable professors including Kenneth Arrow and Arthur Goldberger who were developing a rigorous approach to economics and econometrics.