Robert E. Lucas, Jr.

Macroeconomics was born as a distinct Žfield in the 1940’s, as a part of the intellectual response to the Great Depression. The term then referred to the body of knowledge and expertise that we hoped would prevent the recurrence of that economic disaster. My thesis in this lecture is that macroeconomics in this original sense has succeeded: Its central problem of depression prevention has been solved, for all practical purposes, and has in fact been solved for many decades. There remain important gains in welfare from better fiscal policies, but I argue that these are gains from providing people with better incentives to work and to save, not from better fine-tuning of spending flows. Taking U.S. performance over the past 50 years as a benchmark, the potential for welfare gains from better long-run, supply-side policies exceeds by far the potential from further improvements in short-run demand management.

2 thoughts on “Robert E. Lucas, Jr.

  1. shinichi Post author

    In his Presidential address to the American Economic Association of 2003, Robert E Lucas (a doyen of the Chicago School) said that ““macroeconomics in this original sense has succeeded: Its central problem of depression prevention has been solved, for all practical purposes, and has in fact been solved for many decades.” Just five years later, the worst economic downturn since the 1930s occurred

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