Edmund Phelps and Modern Macroeconomics

Edmund Phelps, winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Economics, has been a central figure in the development of macroeconomics since his 1961 article ‘The Golden Rule of Accumulation’ on optimal economic growth. His 1967–68 critique of the stability of the Phillips curve trade-off, together with Friedman (1968)14. Friedman , M. 1968 . The role of monetary policy . American Economic Review , 58 ( 1 ) : 1 – 17 .
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View all references, led to the expectations-augmented Phillips curve and the natural rate hypothesis. His work on the choice-theoretic microeconomic foundations of wage, price, and employment dynamics under imperfect information, changed how economists do macroeconomics. Phelps subsequently developed natural rate models in a non-monetary, structuralist direction distinct from Friedman's monetarism and from New Classical economics, analyzing the natural rate of unemployment as a function of the real structure of the economy: real sectoral demands, factor supplies, technology, taxes, subsidies, tariffs, and real interest and exchange rates.