The famous Phillips Curve article

Abstract

Chapter 25, Phillips' essay on wages and unemployment was, for better or for worse both in its direct contributions and in the reactions that it provoked, one of the seminal articles of the last half of the twentieth century. Its theoretical origins lay in Phillips' work on stabilisation policy while its empirical origins lay in a casual comment by one of his colleagues on the LSE staff. Phillips himself was one of the most remarkable persons I have ever met. He saw the economy as a dynamic system whose behaviour could not be understood using neoclassical static analysis - which, as someone who had been strongly influenced by Schumpeter in my student days, was a view that drew me to him. Although he had very little time for the comparative statics which was the stock in trade of conventional econo- mists at the LSE in the 1950s and 1960s, he was always polite to us and never abrasive in any way. I believe he was proud of his varied career, his wartime accomplishments, his survival of a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp, his knowledge of languages, and his broad experiences of the world. But never did he show a suggestion of snobbery or condescension to we lesser mortals. He spoke with great authority and profoundly influenced many of us who came into close contact with him. As far as I knew, he had no strong political views.

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