Phelps, Edmund Strother (1952– )

US economist and theorist, and winner of the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2006 for his work on the relationship between unemployment and inflation.

First published in the late 1960s, his work influenced central bank policies around the world, and helped contribute to a better understanding of the relation between short-run and long-run effects of economic policy.

Born in Evanston, Illinois, he received his doctorate from Yale in 1959. Having worked initially for the Rand Corporation, he then became associate professor at Yale and member of the Cowles Foundation before his appointment as professor of economics at the University of Pennsylvania in 1966. From 1971–82 he was professor of economics at Columbia University (and also at New York University from 1978–79). He became the McVickar professor of political economics at Columbia University in New York in 1982, and the director of its Centre on Capitalism and Society in 2001. He has also been a research fellow at the Observatoire Français des Conjocture Économiques since 2001. Additionally, he has been a consultant to the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (1992–93) and an advisor to the Italian Consiglio delle Ricerche (1997–2000).