Edward C. Prescott
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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| Born | December 26, 1940 Glens Falls, New York |
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| Residence | USA  |
| Nationality | US |
| Field | Economics |
| Institution | Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis W.P. Carey School of Business |
| Alma Mater | Carnegie Mellon University Swarthmore College |
| Academic Advisor | Michael C. Lovell |
| Notable Students | Costas Azariadis Edward Green Finn Kydland |
| Known for | Quantitative general equilibrium business cycle theory Time consistency in economic policy |
| Notable Prizes | Nobel Prize in Economics |
Edward C. Prescott, born 26 December 1940 in Glens Falls, New York, received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics in 2004, sharing the award with Finn E. Kydland, "for their contributions to dynamic macroeconomics: the time consistency of economic policy and the driving forces behind business cycles". This research was primarily conducted while both Kydland and Prescott were affiliated with the Graduate School of Industrial Administration at Carnegie Mellon University.
Currently working as an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis and a Professor at Arizona State University's W.P. Carey School of Business, he is a major figure in macroeconomics, especially the theories of business cycles and general equilibrium. In his "Rules Rather Than Discretion: The Inconsistency of Optimal Plans," published in 1977 with Finn E. Kydland, he analyzed whether central banks should have strict numerical targets or be allowed to use their discretion in setting monetary policy. He is also well known for his work on the Hodrick-Prescott Filter, used to smooth fluctuations in a time series.
In 1962, Prescott received his bachelor's degree in mathematics from Swarthmore College, where he was a member of the Delta Upsilon fraternity. He then received a master's degree from Case Western Reserve University in 1963 and a Ph.D. at Carnegie Mellon University in 1967. From 1966 to 1971, he taught at the University of Pennsylvania. He then returned to Carnegie Mellon until 1980, when he moved to the University of Minnesota. In 1978, he was a visiting professor at the University of Chicago, where he was named a Ford Foundation Research Professor. In the following year, he visited Northwestern University and stayed there until 1982. [1] [2] Since 2003, he has been teaching at Arizona State. Currently, he is the Shinshei Bank Visiting Professor at New York University.
[edit] Awards, fellowships
- Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel (2004)
- Erwin Plein Nemmers Prize in Economics, Northwestern University (2002)
- Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1992)
- Fellow, Econometric Society (1980)
- Alexander Henderson Award, Carnegie Mellon (1967)
[edit] References
Kydland, F., and E. Prescott (1977). "Rules Rather than Discretion: The Inconsistency of Optimal Plans". Journal of Political Economy June: 473–492.
Kydland, F., and E. Prescott (1982). "Time to Build and Aggregate Fluctuations". Econometrica 50: 1345–1370.
Kydland, F., and E. Prescott (1990). "Business Cycles: Real Facts and a Monetary Myth". Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis Quarterly Review Spring: 3–18.
