Robert Lucas, Jr.

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Robert Emerson Lucas, Jr.

Born September 15, 1937 (1937-09-15) (age 70)
Yakima, Washington
Residence U.S.
Nationality American
Fields Economics
Institutions Carnegie Mellon University
University of Chicago
Alma mater University of Chicago
Doctoral advisor Arnold Harberger
Gregg Lewis
Known for Rational expectations
Lucas critique
Neutrality of money - "islands" model
Notable awards Nobel Prize in Economics (1995)

Robert Emerson "Bob" Lucas, Jr. (born September 15, 1937 in Yakima, Washington) is an American economist at the University of Chicago. He is among the 10 best economists in the world according to IDEAS/RePEc. He received the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1995. He is married to economist Nancy Stokey.

He received his B.A. in History in 1959 and Ph.D. in Economics in 1964, both from the University of Chicago. He taught at the Graduate School of Industrial Administration (now Tepper School of Business) at Carnegie Mellon University until 1975, when he returned to the University of Chicago.

One of the most influential economists since the 1970s, he changed the foundations of macroeconomic theory (previously dominated by the Keynesian economics approach), arguing that a macroeconomic model should be built in analogy with microeconomic models. He is well known for his investigations into the implications of the assumption of rational expectations. He developed the "Lucas critique" of economic policymaking, which holds that relationships that appear to hold in the economy, such as an apparent relationship between inflation and unemployment, could change in response to changes in economic policy. He also developed the Lucas-Islands model, which suggests that people are tricked by unsystematic parts of monetary policy, and the Lucas-Uzawa model (with Hirofumi Uzawa) of human capital accumulation.

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[edit] Trivia

His ex-wife, Rita Lucas, upon their divorce in 1988, had a clause placed in their divorce settlement that she would receive half of any Nobel Prize won by Lucas in the next seven years. When Lucas did win the Nobel Prize in 1995 (falling just within the time limit), she was awarded half of the prize money. [1]

He did Economics for his PhD on "quasi-Marxist" grounds. He believed that economics was the true driver of history, and so he planned to fully immerse himself in economics and then migrate back to the history department. [2]

[edit] Bibliography

  • Lucas, Robert (1972). "Expectations and the Neutrality of Money". Journal of Economic Theory 4: 103–124. 
  • Lucas, Robert (1976). "Econometric Policy Evaluation: A Critique". Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy 1: 19–46. 
  • Lucas, Robert (1988). "On the Mechanics of Economic Development". Journal of Monetary Economics 22: 3–42. doi:10.1016/0304-3932(88)90168-7. 
  • Lucas, Robert (1990). "Why Doesn't Capital Flow from Rich to Poor Countries". American Economic Review 80: 92–96. 
  • Lucas, Robert (1981). Studies in Business-Cycle Theory. MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-62044-8. 
  • Lucas, Robert (1995) - MONETARY NEUTRALITY Prize Lecture - 1995 Nobel Prize in economics , December 7, 1995
  • Stokey, Nancy; Robert Lucas; and Edward Prescott (1989), Recursive Methods in Economic Dynamics. Harvard University Press, ISBN 0674750969.

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Persondata
NAME Lucas, Robert, Jr.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION Economist
DATE OF BIRTH September 15, 1937
PLACE OF BIRTH Yakima, Washington
DATE OF DEATH
PLACE OF DEATH