IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/jhisec/v32y2010i03p329-348_00.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Friedman’S Nobel Lecture And The Phillips Curve Myth

Author

Listed:
  • FORDER, JAMES

Abstract

In his Nobel lecture, Friedman built on his earlier argument for a “natural rate of unemployment†by painting a picture of an economics profession which, as a result of foolish mistakes, had accepted the Phillips curve as offering a lasting trade-off between inflation and unemployment, and was thereby led to advocate a policy of inflation. It is argued here that, in fact, the orthodox economists of the time often did not accept Phillips’ analysis; almost no one made the mistakes in question; and very few advocated inflation on bases vulnerable to Friedman’s theoretical criticisms. The Phillips curve was put to various uses, but advocating inflation was hardly amongst them. It is suggested that one lasting result of the uncritical acceptance of Friedman’s history is to limit what appears to be within the reasonable range of views about macroeconomic policy.

Suggested Citation

  • Forder, James, 2010. "Friedman’S Nobel Lecture And The Phillips Curve Myth," Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Cambridge University Press, vol. 32(3), pages 329-348, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:jhisec:v:32:y:2010:i:03:p:329-348_00
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S1053837210000301/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Roger E. Backhouse, 2013. "Responding to economic crisis: macroeconomic revolutions in the 1930s and 1970s," Chapters, in: Mats Benner (ed.), Before and Beyond the Global Economic Crisis, chapter 2, pages 38-54, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    2. Rancan, Antonella, 2021. "The “Place Of The Phillips Curve” in Macroeconometric Models: The Case of the First Federal Reserve Board’s Model (1966-1980s)," OSF Preprints t5jrx, Center for Open Science.
    3. Kakarot-Handtke, Egmont, 2012. "Keynes’s employment function and the gratuitous Phillips curve disaster," MPRA Paper 43111, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Rancan, Antonella, 2022. "The "place of the Phillips curve" in macroeconometric models: The case of the first Federal Reserve Board's model (1966-1980s)," Economics & Statistics Discussion Papers esdp22080, University of Molise, Department of Economics.
    5. Hawkins, Raymond J., 2017. "Macroeconomic susceptibility, inflation, and aggregate supply," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 469(C), pages 15-22.
    6. Kakarot-Handtke, Egmont, 2011. "Increasing returns and stability," MPRA Paper 33133, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Zinn, Jesse, 2013. "Stagflation and the Rejection of Keynesian Economics: A Case of Naive Falsification," MPRA Paper 50536, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    8. J. F. Li & Z. X. Lin, 2016. "Social benefit expenditures and stagflation: evidence from the United States," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 48(55), pages 5340-5347, November.
    9. Roger E. Backhouse & James Forder, 2013. "Rationalizing Incomes Policy in Britain, 1948-1979," HISTORY OF ECONOMIC THOUGHT AND POLICY, FrancoAngeli Editore, vol. 2013(1), pages 17-35.
    10. Goulven Rubin, 2012. "Robert Solow de la courbe de Phillips à la question des fondements de la macroéconomie: 1960-1981," Working Papers hal-00852269, HAL.
    11. Alexandre Flávio Silva Andrada, 2014. "Um Estudo Do Discurso Doutrinário De Robert E. Lucas Jr. Método E História Das Ideias Acerca Das Análises De Ciclos Econômicos," Anais do XLI Encontro Nacional de Economia [Proceedings of the 41st Brazilian Economics Meeting] 005, ANPEC - Associação Nacional dos Centros de Pós-Graduação em Economia [Brazilian Association of Graduate Programs in Economics].

    More about this item

    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:cup:jhisec:v:32:y:2010:i:03:p:329-348_00. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/het .

    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.