Robert Lucas Jr.
Robert Emerson Lucas, Jr. | |
|---|---|
| Born | September 15, 1937 Yakima, Washington, USA |
| Nationality | United States |
| Academic career | |
| Institution | Carnegie Mellon University University of Chicago |
| Field | Macroeconomics |
| School or tradition | New classical macroeconomics |
| Alma mater | University of Chicago |
| Influences | Arnold Harberger H. Gregg Lewis Milton Friedman |
| Contributions | Rational expectations Lucas critique Neutrality of money |
| Awards | Nobel Prize in Economics (1995) |
| Information at IDEAS / RePEc | |
Robert Emerson Lucas, Jr. (born September 15, 1937, Yakima, Washington) is an American economist at the University of Chicago. He received the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1995 and is consistently indexed among the top 10 economists in the Research Papers in Economics rankings.[1] He is married to economist Nancy Stokey.
He received his B.A. in History in 1959 and Ph.D. in Economics in 1964, both from the University of Chicago. He taught at the Graduate School of Industrial Administration (now Tepper School of Business) at Carnegie Mellon University until 1975, when he returned to the University of Chicago.
One of the most influential economists since the 1970s, he challenged the foundations of macroeconomic theory (previously dominated by the Keynesian economics approach), arguing that a macroeconomic model should be built as an aggregated version of microeconomic models (while noting that aggregation in the theoretical sense may not be possible within a given model). He developed the "Lucas critique" of economic policymaking, which holds that relationships that appear to hold in the economy, such as an apparent relationship between inflation and unemployment, could change in response to changes in economic policy. This led to the development of neoclassical and New Keynesian economics and the drive towards microeconomic foundations for macroeconomic theory.
Lucas is also well known for his investigations into the implications of the assumption of rational expectations. He developed the a theory of supply that suggests people can be tricked by unsystematic monetary policy; the Lucas-Uzawa model (with Hirofumi Uzawa) of human capital accumulation; and the "Lucas paradox", which considers why more capital does not flow from developed countries to developing countries.
His ex-wife, Rita Lucas, upon their divorce in 1988, had a clause placed in their divorce settlement that she would receive half of any Nobel Prize won by Lucas in the next seven years. When Lucas did win the Nobel Prize in 1995 (falling just within the time limit), she was awarded half of the prize money.[2]
Lucas studied Economics for his PhD on "quasi-Marxist" grounds. He believed that economics was the true driver of history, and so he planned to fully immerse himself in economics and then migrate back to the history department.[3]
Bibliography
- Lucas, Robert (1972). "Expectations and the Neutrality of Money". Journal of Economic Theory. 4: 103–124. doi:10.1016/0022-0531(72)90142-1.
- Lucas, Robert (1976). "Econometric Policy Evaluation: A Critique". Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy. 1: 19–46. doi:10.1016/S0167-2231(76)80003-6.
- Lucas, Robert (1988). "On the Mechanics of Economic Development". Journal of Monetary Economics. 22: 3–42. doi:10.1016/0304-3932(88)90168-7.
- Lucas, Robert (1990). "Why Doesn't Capital Flow from Rich to Poor Countries". American Economic Review. 80: 92–96.
- Lucas, Robert (1981). Studies in Business-Cycle Theory. MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-62044-8.
- Lucas, Robert (1995) - MONETARY NEUTRALITY Prize Lecture - 1995 Nobel Prize in economics , December 7, 1995
- Stokey, Nancy; Robert Lucas; and Edward Prescott (1989), Recursive Methods in Economic Dynamics. Harvard University Press, ISBN 0-674-75096-9.
See also
- Macroeconomics
- New classical economics
- Rational Expectations
- Welfare cost of business cycles
- List of economists
- Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences
- Lucas-Islands model
References
- ^ IDEAS/RePEc Research Papers in Economics database
- ^ The Boston Globe http://www.boston.com/globe/search/stories/nobel/1995/1995f.html.
{{cite news}}: Missing or empty|title=(help) - ^ http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2007/02/lucas_on_growth.html
- Kasper, Sherryl. The Revival of Laissez-Faire in American Macroeconomic Theory: A Case Study of Its Pioneers (2002) ch. 7
- Associated Press (1995-10-21). "Nobel winner noble in loss; accord awards half of prize to ex-wife" (– Scholar search). Boston Globe. p. 65.
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External links
- Articles with dead external links from June 2008
- 1937 births
- Living people
- Carnegie Mellon University faculty
- Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences
- Macroeconomists
- American economists
- New classical economists
- Nobel laureates in Economics
- American Nobel laureates
- University of Chicago alumni
- University of Chicago faculty
- Guggenheim Fellows
- People from Yakima, Washington
- Presidents of the Econometric Society