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THE “PLACE OF THE PHILLIPS CURVE” IN MACROECONOMETRIC MODELS: THE CASE OF THE FEDERAL RESERVE BOARD’S MODEL (1966–1980s)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 April 2022

Antonella Rancan Open the ORCID record for Antonella Rancan [Opens in a new window]
Antonella Rancan*
Affiliation:
Antonella Rancan: University of Molise (Italy); e-mail: antonella.rancan@unimol.it.
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Abstract

In the article I examine how model builders from the academia and from the Federal Reserve Board confronted the Phillips curve in the construction and subsequent modifications of the Federal Reserve, MIT, and University of Pennsylvania macroeconometric model. It is argued that academic debates on Milton Friedman’s and Edmund Phelps’s accelerationist hypothesis, and the evolution of the macroeconomics discipline, did not affect the model-building agenda at the Division of Research and Statistics at the Board over the 1970s and 1980s.

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Articles
Information
Journal of the History of Economic Thought , Volume 44 , Issue 2 , June 2022 , pp. 161 - 181
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the History of Economics Society

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Footnotes

I wish to thank the Center for the History of Political Economy and the Fulbright research scholar fellowships that have given me the opportunity to spend a research period at the Center; and the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book Library staff for their kind helpfulness. I am grateful to participants in the HES 2019 meetings, in the 2018 SIE conference, and in the 2019 STOREP conference for their useful comments, and to James Forder for his valuable suggestions. I also thank Edward Nelson for his careful reading and stimulating and detailed comments. Referees’ suggestions have been important to improve my narrative and to clarify the content of the paper. The title is a quotation from Lipsey (1978): “The Place of the Phillips Curve in Macroeconomic Models.”

References

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