Edmund Phelps Quotes

At the time, my personal research objectives were to provide Keynesian economics with more rigorous foundations and to tighten and elaborate the logic of macroeconomic and monetary theory.

Macroeconomics is the analysis of the economy as a whole, an examination of overall supply and demand. At the broadest level, macroeconomists want to understand why some countries grow faster than others and which government policies can help growth.

Economic science concerns itself primarily with theoretical and empirical generalizations about the behavior of individuals, institutions, markets, and national economies. Most academic research falls in this category.

I am not a monetarist, and I am not a Keynesian. On certain points I agree with each.

I work with the macro economy, which involves the major variables that measure the health of the whole economy, such as total consumption, investment, income, employment, and inflation.

The fallacy of the neoclassicals is their tenet that total employment, though hit by shocks, can be said always to be heading back to some normal level.

In my long life, I have known some great economists, but I have never counted myself among their number nor walked in their company.

I don't think money itself has any causal relationship to nominal GNP. The dominating causal force is interest rates.

Yes. We do think that the stimulus package is raising GDP and raising employment relative to what would have happened otherwise.

We believe that - the President believes that the economy will continue to grow, that the economy will continue to create jobs, and that we need to do everything we can to enhance that growth and enhance that job creation.

It was gradually learned that acceptance of a somewhat higher inflation rate would not really bring somewhat higher employment.

The difference between microeconomics and macroeconomics is a bit like the difference between biology and medicine. Knowing that certain genes increase the risk of cancer is relatively easy. Figuring out exactly which people will get sick, or how to cure them, is a lot more complicated.

My main interest, however, was in economics, not law.

I'm happy to say I am a Harrison-Kreps-Keynesian.

I had become interested in economics, an interest that was transformed into a lifetime dedication when I met with the mathematical theory of general economic equilibrium.

But if the choice is a cool president and 8 or 10 percent unemployment in a declining economy and a country that seems to be going in the wrong direction and structural unemployment for young people at 50 percent, I'd rather have a dorky president who fixed those problems.

But as you say, the fundamental stumbling block is the question of the future of the economy. And it's not just the sort of economic laboratory question, of what kind of system would best generate growth, which is the way it's presented.

I studied economics and made it my career for two reasons. The subject was and is intellectually fascinating and challenging, particularly to someone with taste and talent for theoretical reasoning and quantitative analysis.

Disciples of Keynes, who focus on aggregate demand, view any increase in household wealth as raising employment because they say it adds to consumer demand.

I am not a politician but I have dedicated the biggest part of my professional life to economic policy both in Greece and Europe.

In the 1970s, as historians became enchanted with microhistories, economists were expanding the reach of their discipline. Nations, states and cities began to plan for the future by consulting with economists whose prognostications were shaped by investment cycles rather than historical ones.

I've always been a macroeconomist. That's what I teach. And I guess that's what I've been concerned with ever since I've been very young.

There is a big divergence between views on a variety of policy issues from fiscal stimulus to financial regulation. It's my hope and my ambition for the economics profession that as we advance our knowledge, that those discussions will narrow in their focus, and that it will help to have more prudent policy-making down the road.

I was initially very interested in public policy, but then after my masters at Harvard, I felt that it was important to get a better handle on the economics of it as well. I did my Ph.D. in macroeconomics, and my thesis - 'Why Is It That Some Countries Save And Others Not?' - was on savings.

If borrowing and spending all this money led to more jobs than we would be at full employment already.