Robert J. Gordon
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| New Keynesian economics | |
|---|---|
| Birth | September 3, 1940 |
| Nationality |  United States |
| Institution | Northwestern University |
| Field | Macroeconomics Social economics |
| Alma mater | Harvard University Oxford University MIT |
| Contributions | Core inflation Productivity Growth theory |
| Information at IDEAS/RePEc | |
Robert James "Bob" Gordon is an American economist. He is the Stanley G. Harris Professor of the Social Sciences at Northwestern University. He is known for his work on productivity, growth, the causes of unemployment, and airline economics.[citation needed]
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[edit] Career and contributions
From 1995 to 1997, he served on the Boskin Commission to assess the accuracy of the United States Consumer Price Index (CPI), having written the definitive criticism of CPI inflation overstatement in 1990. He is also a member of the Business Cycle Dating Committee of the NBER, which determines when recessions start and end.
Robert J. Gordon's popular text Macroeconomics was the first to incorporate the rational expectations hypothesis into the analysis of the Phillips curve. Soon all subsequent macro textbooks were expounding the "Expectations Augmented Phillips Curve." And, now as some twenty years have passed from the first appearance of Gordon's text, it is still the standard approach to the question of the trade-off between inflation and unemployment in the short and long run.
In addition, Gordon has written for Economic Journals, outlining the relation of the productivity growth of modern day inventions to the great inventions of the late 19th century. He focuses on the impact of computers in the post-1995 economy on the durable manufacturing sector. Furthermore, he emphasises the marginal productivity of computing technology affects standard of living in a much more contained fashion than the earlier great American inventions.[1] He downplays the role of computer technology in the economic growth of the latter 20th century in accounting for business cycle and trends. In addition, he also questions the actual productivity of such technological developments, a cost restraint of that which is time itself. However, one cannot go about without wondering whether or not such growth and rise in the business cycle is not attributed to the technological advancements itself. Other factors that must be taken into consideration is the lag time of efficiency after new technology developments due to the deepening of capital and enrichment of human capital to better suit the development(education).
[edit] Family
Gordon is a member of a family of economists. Both his parents Robert Aaron and Margaret earned distinction independently, each contributing to economic knowledge with a view to real practical benefit for society, as did his brother David, himself more of a radical. For example, his father is the namesake of the "Gordon Report" which proposed reforms for the computation of the unemployment rate by the US Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics. He currently resides in Wilmette, IL with his wife Alanna and son Ross.
[edit] Major books
- Macroeconomics, Addison Wesley, 2002 ISBN 0-201-77036-9
- The Measurement of Durable Goods Prices, University Of Chicago Press, 1990 ISBN 0-226-30455-8
- "The Demand for and Supply of Inflation." Journal of Law and Economics 18 (Dec. 1975): 807-836
- "Recent Developments in the Theory of Inflation and Unemployment." Journal of Monetary Economics 2 (April 1976): 195-219
- Milton Friedman's Monetary Framework: A Debate With His Critics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977
[edit] References
- ^ Gordon, Robert J. (2000), "Does the 'New Economy' measure up to the great Inventions of the Past?", Journal of Economic Perspectives 14 (4): 49–74, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2647075
