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Remembering the man who busted1 the inflation-employment myth
A look at how Nobel Prize winning American economist3 Robert Lucas changed the field of macroeconomics. He died this week at 85.
LEILA FADEL, HOST:
The world of economics lost a major force this week. Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Lucas died on Monday. He was 85. Our colleagues Darian Woods and Adrian Ma of the Indicator4 from Planet Money podcast explain how Lucas changed the field of macroeconomics.
DARIAN WOODS, BYLINE5: Robert Lucas was one of the most important economists6 over the last 50 years. Born in Yakima, Wash., he went on scholarship to the University of Chicago. We called his one-time colleague, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, John Cochrane.
JOHN COCHRANE: He really was a giant in the field. I think he's not so well-known outside economics. But a lot of us would put him as the most influential7 economist of the 20th century. When you look at what economists do now, it's Lucas, Lucas, Lucas (laughter).
WOODS: And according to John Cochrane, he was also a great colleague.
COCHRANE: I showed up as a assistant professor in the University of Chicago fresh out of Berkeley, didn't know much about anything (laughter). And Bob treated me, a brash, young assistant professor who didn't know much of anything, like a full colleague.
ADRIAN MA, BYLINE: One of his big contributions can be understood by going back to the high inflation period of the 1970s. Back then, economists talked about this inverse8 relationship between inflation and unemployment. And the idea is that when inflation is low, unemployment tends to be high. And when inflation is high, unemployment tends to be low. So that is kind of similar to what we have now. Prices have been rising faster than we'd like, but unemployment is very low. There are tons of jobs out there.
WOODS: What was different then was that some economists and policymakers were arguing that inflation was the lesser9 of two evils.
COCHRANE: Those economists quickly decided10 that wasn't just a correlation11, that was something exploitable. Let's have a little more inflation, and we could really beat down unemployment. Bob Lucas really kicked it out of the park to understand that this correlation wouldn't last once you tried to exploit it, that it was just a correlation. So you know, rich guys drive BMWs. That doesn't mean giving everyone a BMW is going to make us all rich, right?
MA: Robert Lucas was saying that those other economists were missing something. They were missing that people respond to changes of the rules of the game. And at some point, what might have worked in the past stops working.
WOODS: Yeah, so you can end up with high inflation and high unemployment, the worst of both possible worlds. Here's Robert Lucas on NPR in 1996, talking about his findings.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST
ROBERT LUCAS: There's less of a need for government to play a role as an active stabilizer of an unstable12 system. We've come to the realization13 that the government is less able to do that than we once thought.
MA: What's really powerful about Robert Lucas' insights is that it can be applied14 anywhere, not just to inflation. Anytime you're thinking about a new policy, economists have to answer this question - how would people respond? And simply saying, well, based on history, they're going to respond this way, that's not good enough. Economists call this the Lucas critique.
WOODS: Essentially15, the Lucas critique pointed16 out that the economy isn't a chessboard where you can just shift the pieces around with a formula. Your opponent will probably figure it out and change how they play.
MA: Adrian Ma.
WOODS: Darian Woods, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
1 busted | |
adj. 破产了的,失败了的,被降级的,被逮捕的,被抓到的 动词bust的过去式和过去分词 | |
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2 transcript | |
n.抄本,誊本,副本,肄业证书 | |
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3 economist | |
n.经济学家,经济专家,节俭的人 | |
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4 indicator | |
n.指标;指示物,指示者;指示器 | |
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5 byline | |
n.署名;v.署名 | |
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6 economists | |
n.经济学家,经济专家( economist的名词复数 ) | |
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7 influential | |
adj.有影响的,有权势的 | |
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8 inverse | |
adj.相反的,倒转的,反转的;n.相反之物;v.倒转 | |
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9 lesser | |
adj.次要的,较小的;adv.较小地,较少地 | |
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10 decided | |
adj.决定了的,坚决的;明显的,明确的 | |
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11 correlation | |
n.相互关系,相关,关连 | |
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12 unstable | |
adj.不稳定的,易变的 | |
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13 realization | |
n.实现;认识到,深刻了解 | |
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14 applied | |
adj.应用的;v.应用,适用 | |
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15 essentially | |
adv.本质上,实质上,基本上 | |
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16 pointed | |
adj.尖的,直截了当的 | |
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