In 1995, Robert E. Lucas, Jr., was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences. This review places Lucas’ work in a historical context and evaluates the effect of this work on the economics profession. Lucas’ central contribution is that he developed and applied economic theory to answer substantive questions in macroeconomics. Economists today routinely analyze systems in which agents operate in complex probabilistic environments to understand interactions about which the great theorists of an earlier generation could only speculate. This sea change is due primarily to Lucas. This essay is reprinted from the Journal of Economic Perspectives (Winter 1998, vol. 12, no. 1, pp. 171–86) with the permission of the American Economic Association.
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Article provided by Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis in its journal Quarterly Review.
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Lucas, Robert E, Jr & Prescott, Edward C, 1971.
"Investment Under Uncertainty,"
Econometrica,
Econometric Society, vol. 39(5), pages 659-81, September.
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