Born into a distinguished professional family, Hans Neisser achieved a considerable reputation during the German phase of his career--first as economic advisor to the Weimar Government, then as coeditor of one of the leading German business magazines, and after 1927 as Deputy Director of Research in the Institute of world Economics at Kiel University. It was there that he published his first major work, Der Tauschwert des Geldes, one of the very few books written outside of the Anglo-American orbit that Keynes quoted with full approval in his Treatise on Money. From the same period dates his generally acknowledged critique of the fundamentals of the Walrasian system.

Neisser's first academic appointment in this country was as Professor of Monetary Theory in the University of Pennsylvania, followed during the war by a responsible position in the Office of Price Administration. In 1943 he joined the Graduate Faculty of the New School, where lie served in a leadership capacity, including tenure as Chairman of the Department of Economics, until his retirement in 1965.

Neisser's teaching and research covered almost the entire scope of economics. Centering on economic theory, his contributions extended to international economics, the history of economic thought, and many fields of applied economics, where he drew on his wide practical experience. Neisser early acknowledged econometrics as an effective tool of empirical research. In collaboration with Franco Modigliani he published in 1953 National Income and International Trade, to date the most comprehensive econometric investigation of: The world-economic relations during the interwar period. Also pioneering was his essay on "The Pricing of Consumer Durables", which appeared in 1959 in Econometrica. Under Neisser's guidance the New School became the first teaching institution in the metropolitan area to establish a training center for econometric study. His work ranges from studies on the New Economics to essays on Marx; from an examination of general overproduction to a critical analysis of the theory of games.