IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/fip/fedrer/y1985isepp17-24nv.71no.5.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The early history of the Phillips curve

Author

Listed:
  • Thomas M. Humphrey

Abstract

The Phillips Curve depicts a relationship between inflation and unemployment in graphical or equation form. In a previous article (see the March /April issue of this Review), Thomas Humphrey catalogued the various formulations of the relationship that have appeared since the publication in 1958 of A. W. Phillips famous article on the subject. In the present article, Humphrey turns to the history of monetary doctrines seeking precursors of the modern formulations in the writings of Phillips forerunners. Humphrey finds an early representation of a Phillips Curve relationship in the writings of David Hume. Other pioneers in the curves pre-history include Irving Fisher, who first attempted to verify the relationship statistically, Jan Tinbergen, who estimated the first econometric Phillips Curve equation, and Paul Sultan, who first represented the relationship as a graph. Also considered are the contributions of Henry Thornton, John Stuart Mill, Lawrence Klein, A. J. Brown and others. Despite the work of these men, the Phillips Curve did not gain wide acceptance until the 1960s. Humphrey suggests several reasons for its belated popularity.

Suggested Citation

  • Thomas M. Humphrey, 1985. "The early history of the Phillips curve," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, vol. 71(Sep), pages 17-24.
  • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedrer:y:1985:i:sep:p:17-24:n:v.71no.5
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/files/docs/publications/frbrichreview/rev_frbrich198509.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Donner, Arthur & McCollum, James F, 1972. "The Phillips Curve: An Historical Note," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 39(155), pages 323-324, August.
    2. Amid-Hozour, E & Dick, D T & Lucier, Richard L, 1971. "Sultan Schedule and Phillips Curve: An Historical Note," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 38(151), pages 319-320, August.
    3. Bacon, Robert, 1973. "The Phillips Curve: Another Forerunner," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 40(159), pages 314-315, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Blog mentions

    As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
    1. Lo scopo inconfessato della riforma del mercato del lavoro
      by Alberto Bagnai in Goofynomics on 2012-04-12 17:24:00
    2. The unconfessed goal of Italian labour market reform
      by Alberto Bagnai in Goofynomics on 2012-04-12 17:03:00
    3. LO SCOPO INCOFESSATO DELLA RIFORMA DEL LAVORO
      by free-italia in Free Italia on 2012-04-13 15:30:00

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Gerlach, Stefan & Lydon, Reamonn & Stuart, Rebecca, 2015. "Unemployment and inflation in Ireland: 1926-2012," CFS Working Paper Series 514, Center for Financial Studies (CFS).
    2. J. Aschheim & G.S. Tavlas, 1994. "Nominal anchors for monetary policy: a doctrinal analysis," Banca Nazionale del Lavoro Quarterly Review, Banca Nazionale del Lavoro, vol. 47(191), pages 469-494.
    3. Emilie Jasova, 2014. "A Model for Estimation of NAIRU Extended by Demand Shocks and its Application to Business Cycle Analysis in the Labour Market in Hungary and Poland," Proceedings of Economics and Finance Conferences 0401788, International Institute of Social and Economic Sciences.
    4. Bo?ena Kade?ábková & Emilie Ja?ová, 2021. "How the Czech government got the pandemic wrong," Proceedings of Economics and Finance Conferences 12513377, International Institute of Social and Economic Sciences.
    5. Bozena Kaderabkova, 2016. "Development of the economic cycle on labour market in the national economy and industry of the Czech Republi," Proceedings of Business and Management Conferences 4407037, International Institute of Social and Economic Sciences.
    6. Edward Nelson, 2007. "The Great Inflation and Early Disinflation in Japan and Germany," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 3(4), pages 23-76, December.
    7. Hawkins, Raymond J., 2017. "Macroeconomic susceptibility, inflation, and aggregate supply," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 469(C), pages 15-22.
    8. Emilie Ja?ová, 2016. "The effect of the psychological factor among companies onto the NAIRU and economic cycle on the labour market," Proceedings of International Academic Conferences 5307026, International Institute of Social and Economic Sciences.
    9. Emilie Jašová & Božena Kaderábková, 2012. "Comparing NAIRU and Economic Cycle from the Perspective of Labour Market in the Countries of the Visegrad Group," Economic Studies journal, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences - Economic Research Institute, issue 4, pages 3-23.
    10. Ferreira, Diego & Palma, Andreza Aparecida, 2015. "Forecasting Inflation with the Phillips Curve: A Dynamic Model Averaging Approach for Brazil," Revista Brasileira de Economia - RBE, EPGE Brazilian School of Economics and Finance - FGV EPGE (Brazil), vol. 69(4), December.
    11. Bo?ena Kade?ábková & Emilie Ja?ová, 0000. "Phillips curve during the economic cycle in the Czech Republic and Poland in the years 2000 to 2016," Proceedings of Economics and Finance Conferences 11413218, International Institute of Social and Economic Sciences.
    12. José Francisco Bellod Redondo, 2013. "La NAIRU y la pseudociencia neoliberal," Revista de Economía Crítica, Asociación de Economía Crítica, vol. 16, pages 18-43.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Thomas M. Humphrey, 1977. "On cost-push theories of inflation in the pre-war monetary literature," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, vol. 63(May), pages 3-9.
    2. Benati, Luca, 2010. "Evolving Phillips trade-off," Working Paper Series 1176, European Central Bank.
    3. Thomas M. Humphrey, 1979. "On cost-push theories of inflation in the pre-war monetary literature," Monograph, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, number 1979optoiitwm.
    4. Mark S Astley & Tony Yates, 1999. "Inflation and real disequilibria," Bank of England working papers 103, Bank of England.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Phillips curve;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:fip:fedrer:y:1985:i:sep:p:17-24:n:v.71no.5. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Christian Pascasio (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbrius.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.