Edmund Phelps obtuvo el premio del Banco Central de Suecia en memoria de Alfred
Nobel en 2006 en reconocimiento a sus análisis sobre "las compensaciones
intertemporales en las políticas macroeconómicas".
Edmund S.
Phelps se graduó en el Amherst College en 1955 y obtuvo su doctorado en Yale en
1959. Fue profesor de Economía en las universidades de Yale y Pennsilvania. En
1971 se incorporó al departamento de economía en la Columbia University de New
York, en la que es McVickar Professor of Political Economy desde 1982.
Es también director del Center on Capitalism and Society, Earth Institute
en la misma universidad.
A pesar de
que obtuvo el Premio Nobel por sus trabajos sobre macroeconomía, Phelps ha
estado siempre interesado en temas de microeconomía y ha sido la microeconomía
lo que le ha dado su prestigio en el mundo académico. Especialmente en el problema
de la información imperfecta de los participantes en los mercados y en los
efectos de las creencias y las expectativas sobre los resultados de los
mercados. Ha estudiado también en detalle el mercado laboral. En los años 60
propuso una rudimentaria teoría de la 'tasa natural de desempleo' a partir de
la cual podía comprenderse cómo los mercados generaban desempleo. Ese fue un
trabajo seminal de gran repercusión en toda la teoría económica y, ciertamente,
con repercusiones macroeconómicas.
La idea básica
de Phelps es que como los agentes económicos tienen información incompleta, los
precios se determinan en función de las expectativas. Así ocurre también en los
mercados laborales en los que las expectativas de inflación conducirán a
subidas salariales.
En los años
50 y 60 estaba muy de moda el análisis denominado "Curva de
Phillips" que apuntaba a la necesidad de encontrar una
compensación entre la tasa de desempleo y la tasa de inflación. Phelps propuso
que las expectativas de inflación 'empujaban' la Curva de Phillips alejándola
del origen. La inflación,
por tanto, depende de la tasa de desempleo y de las expectativas.
·
"A Test for the Presence
of Cost Inflation in the United States, 1955-57", 1961, Yale Economic
Esssays.
·
"The Golden Rule of
Accumulation: A fable for growthmen", 1961, AER.
·
"The New View of
Investment: A Neoclassical analysis", 1962, QJE
·
"The Accumulation of
Risky Capital: A Sequential Utility Analysis", 1962, Econometrica
·
"Substitution, Fixed
Proportions, Growth and Distribution", 1963, IER
·
Fiscal Neutrality Toward
Economic Growth, 1965.
·
"Second Essay on the Golden
Rule of Accumulation", 1965, AER
·
"Anticipated Inflation
and Economic Welfare", 1965, JPE
·
Golden Rules of Economic
Growth, 1966.
·
"Investment in Humans,
Technological Diffusion, and Economic Growth", with R.R. Nelson, 1966, AER
·
"Factor-Price-Frontier
Estimation of a 'Vintage' Production Model of the Postwar United States Nonfarm
Business Sector" with C. Phelps, 1966, REStat
·
"Phillips curves,
Expectations of Inflation and Optimal Unemployment Over Time", 1967,
Economica.
·
"On Second-Best National
Saving and Game-Equilibrium Growth", with R.A. Pollack, 1968, RES
·
Microeconomic Foundations of
Employment and Inflation Theory, 1970.
·
"Money, Public Debt,
Inflation and Real Interest", with E. Burmeister, 1971, JMCB.
·
Inflation Policy and
Unemployment Theory: The cost-benefit approach to monetary planning, 1972.
·
"Money, Public
Expenditure and the Labor Supply", 1972, JET
·
"The Statistical Theory
of Racism and Sexism", 1972, AER
·
"Taxation of Wage Income
for Economic Justice", 1973, QJE
·
"Inflation in a Theory of
Public Finance", 1973, Swedish JE.
·
Fiscal Neutrality Toward
Economic Growth, 1974
·
"The Indeterminacy of
Game-Equilibrium Growth in the Absence of an Ethic," 1975, in Phelps,
editor, Altruism, Morality and Economic Theory
·
"Linear Taxation of
Wealth and Wages for Intergenerational Lifetime Justice: Some Steady-State
Cases," with J.A. Ordover, 1975, AER
·
"Linear 'Maximin'
Taxation of Wage and Property Income on a "Maximin' Growth Path",
1976, in Balassa and Nelson, editors, Economic Progress, Private Values and
Public Policy:
·
"Social Policy and
Uncertain Careers: Beyond Rawls's Paradigm Case," 1976, in Grieson,
editor, Urban and Public Economics
·
"Recent Development in
Welfare Economics: Justice et Equite," 1977, in Intrillagator, editor,
Frontiers of Quantitative Economics
·
"Stabilizing Powers of
Monetary Policy under Rational Expectations", with J. Taylor, 1977, JPE.
·
"Rawlsian Growth: Dynamic
Programming of Capital Wealth for Intergeneration 'Maximin' Justice," with
J.G. Riley, 1978, RES
·
"Commodity-Supply Shock
and Full-Employment Monetary Policy", 1978, JMCB
·
"Inflation
Planning Reconsidered," 1978, Economica
·
"Trans-National Effects
of Fiscal Shocks in a Two-Country Model of Dynamic Equilibrium", 1978,
CROCH
·
"Disinflation without
Recession: Adaptive guideposts and monetary policy", 1979, WWA.
·
"On the Concept of
Optimal Taxation in the Overlapping-Generations Model of Economic Growth,"
with J.A. Ordover, JPubE
·
Studies in Macroeconomic
Theory, 2 vols, 1979-80.
·
"Cracks on the Demand
Side: A Year of Crisis in Theoretical Macroeconomics", 1982, AER
·
"A Model of Non-Walrasian
General Equilibrium: Its Pareto Inoptimality and Pareto Improvement," with
G.A. Calvo, 1983, in Tobin, editor, Macroeconomics, Prices and Quantities.
·
."Implicit Contracts and
the Social Contract" 1983, in Dornbusch and Simonson, editors, Inflation,
Debt and Indexation
·
"The Trouble with
Rational Expectations and the Problem of Inflation Stabilization", 1983,
in Frydman and Phelps, editors, Individual Forecasting and Aggregate Outcomes
·
Political
Economy, 1985
·
"Profits Theory and
Profits Taxation", 1986, IMF Staff Papers
·
The Slump in Europe, with J.P.
Fitoussi, 1988
·
"Optimum Fiscal Policy
When Monetary Policy is Bound by a Rule," with K. Velupillai, 1988, in
Arrow and Boskin, editors, Economics of Public Debt
·
"A Working Model of Slump
and Recovery from Disturbances to Capital-Goods Demand in an Open Non-Monetary
Economy", 1988, AER
·
"New Channels in the
Transmission of Foreign Shocks," 1989, in Calvo et al., editors, Debt,
Stabilization and Development
·
Seven Schools of Macroeconomic
Thought, 1990
·
"The Effectiveness of
Macropolicies in a Small Open-Economy Dynamic Aggregative Model," 1991, in
Brainard et al., editors, Money, Macroeconomics, and Economic Policy
·
"A Working Model of Slump
and Recovery from Disturbances to Capital-Goods Demand in a Closed Non-Monetary
Economy," 1991, in Nell and Semmler, editors, Nicholas Kaldor and
Mainstream Economics
·
"Testing 'Keynesian'
Unemployment Theory against 'Structuralist' Theory: Global Evidence from the
Past Two Decades," 1991, in Nerlove, editor, Issues in Contemporary
Economics
·
"Consumer Demand and
Equilibrium Unemployment in a Customer-Market Incentive-Wage Economy",
1992, QJE
·
"Macroeconomic Shocks in
a Dynamized Model of the Natural Rate of Unemployment," with H.T. Hoon,
1992, AER
·
"Pro-Keynesian and
Counter-Keynesian Implications of the 'Structuralist' Theory of Unemployment
and Interest under the Classic Two-Sector View of Capital and Production",
1993, in Knoester, editor, Taxation in the United States and Europe.
·
"Fiscal Policy and
Economic Activity in the Neoclassical Theory with and without Bequests,"
with G. Kanaginis, 1994, Finanz Archiv
·
Structural Slumps: The Modern
Equilibrium Theory of Unemployment, Interest and Assets, 1994
·
"Low-Wage Employment
Subsidies versus the Welfare State", 1994, AER
·
"The Origins and Further
Development of the Natural Rate of Unemployment," 1994, in Cross, editor,
The Natural Rate Twenty-Five Years On
·
"The Structuralist Theory
of Employment", 1995, AER
·
"Autobiography of E.S.
Phelps" 1995, in Heertje, Makers of Modern Economics
·
"Payroll Taxes and Wage
Subsidies", 1995, Testimony
·
Rewarding Work: How to Restore
Participation and Self-Support to Free Enterprise, 1997
·
"Growth, Wealth and the
Natural Rate: Is Europe's Jobs Crisis a Growth Crisis?" with H.T. Hoon,
1997, European ER
·
"The Rise and Downward
Trend of the Natural Rate", with G. Zoega, 1997, AER
·
"Natural-rate theory and
OECD unemployment," with G. Zoega, 1998, EJ
·
"Moral Hazard and
Independent Income in a Modern Intertemporal-Equilibrium Model of Involuntary
Unemployment and Mandatory Retirement," 1998, in Chichilnisky, editor,
Markets, Information and Uncertainty
2006
