The Phillips curve represents the relationship between the rate of inflation and the unemployment rate. Although he had precursors, A. W. H. Phillips’s study of wage inflation and unemployment in the United Kingdom from 1861 to 1957 is a milestone in the development of macroeconomics. Phillips found a consistent inverse relationship: when unemployment was high, […]| Econlib
National income accounts (NIAs) are fundamental aggregate statistics in macroeconomic analysis. The ground-breaking development of national income and systems of NIAs was one of the most far-reaching innovations in applied economics in the early twentieth century. NIAs provide a quantitative basis for choosing and assessing economic policies as well as making possible quantitative macroeconomic modeling […]| Econlib
The British economist John Hicks is known for four contributions. The first is his introduction of the idea of the elasticity of substitution. While the concept is difficult to explain in a few words, Hicks used it to show, contrary to the marxist allegations, that labor-saving technical progress—the kind we generally have—does not necessarily […]| Econlib
Abba Lerner was the milton friedman of the left. Like Friedman, Lerner was a brilliant expositor of economics who was able to make complex concepts crystal clear. Lerner was also an unusual kind of socialist: he hated government power over people’s lives. Like Friedman, he praised private enterprise on the ground that “alternatives to government […]| Econlib
Timothy Taylor, at Conversable Economist, had a post on August 13 titled “What Economic Ideas are True and Nontrivial?” He starts with a famous story that Paul Samuelson told and I’ll quote it here: [O]ur subject puts its best foot forward when it speaks out on international trade. This was brought home to me years […]| Econlib
Milton Friedman was the twentieth century’s most prominent advocate of free markets. Born in 1912 to Jewish immigrants in New York City, he attended Rutgers University, where he earned his B.A. at the age of twenty. He went on to earn his M.A. from the University of Chicago in 1933 and his Ph.D. from […]| Econlib
Alfred Marshall was the dominant figure in British economics (itself dominant in world economics) from about 1890 until his death in 1924. His specialty was microeconomics—the study of individual markets and industries, as opposed to the study of the whole economy. In his most important book, Principles of Economics, Marshall emphasized that the price […]| Econlib
David Ricardo was one of those rare people who achieved both tremendous success and lasting fame. After his family disinherited him for marrying outside his Jewish faith, Ricardo made a fortune as a stockbroker and loan broker. When he died, his estate was worth more than $100 million in today’s dollars. At age twenty-seven, […]| Econlib
When asked by mathematician Stanislaw Ulam whether he could name an idea in economics that was both universally true and not obvious, economist Paul Samuelson’s example was the principle of comparative advantage. That principle was derived by David Ricardo in his 1817 book, Principles of Political Economy and Taxation. Ricardo’s result, which still holds up […]| Econlib
