Edmund Phelps
Edmund Phelps
Edmund Strother Phelps, Jr.is an American economist and the winner of the 2006 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. Early in his career he became renowned for his research at Yale's Cowles Foundation in the first half of the 1960s on the sources of economic growth. His demonstration of the Golden Rule savings rate, a concept first devised by John von Neumann and Maurice Allais, started a wave of research on how much a nation ought to spend on present...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionEconomist
Date of Birth26 July 1933
CountryUnited States of America
developed methods people period
The 1920s and 1930s were a period of sensational productivity growth: new products were springing up all over the place, and most of those new products and new methods were developed by people who started their own companies.
country dreaming exciting hope people rewarding striking wherever
I would like to see people dreaming of striking out on their own into some other country or their own, wherever they feel the action is, in the hope of an exciting and rewarding career.
afraid follow keeps mounting people produce reason stay tend
One reason why upturns follow downturns is that downturns tend to overshoot. People get panicky, they're afraid to stay the course, so they start selling. The other thing is that I think, as entrepreneurs keep on waiting to produce new things, that there's an accumulation of as-yet-unexploited new ideas that keeps mounting up.
became economic engaged evolve form models people recognize reflect solve trying work
I could try to incorporate or reflect in my models what it is that an employee, manager, or entrepreneur does: to recognize that most are engaged in their work, form expectations and evolve beliefs, solve problems, and have ideas. Trying to put these people into economic models became my project.
ensure opportunity people
The need to encourage entrepreneurship and ensure that young people have the opportunity to start new businesses is acute.
bottomless cuts further people
Things can get only so bad. People want to eat, so at some point they resist further cuts to their consumption - it's not a bottomless pit.
effect knowledge known methods people produced represent required thus
If every effect of any new products or methods were required to be known before they could be produced and marketed, they would not be true innovations - and thus not represent new knowledge of what people would like, if offered.
attacking boy delivery houses people proximity sharing
I'm not attacking the idea that people live in conglomerations of houses in proximity to one another, sharing the same water mains and the same newspaper delivery boy and so forth. I'm not objecting to that. That could happen with or without homeownership.
companies competition fear less lifts prices raise share thus
With less competition to fear, companies are emboldened to raise their mark-ups and profits. That lifts share prices and thus the wealth of already wealthy shareholders.
drives employee innovators led might next social source step taking
I started to think about what drives innovation and what its social significance might be. The next step was to think innovators are taking a leap into the unknown. That led me to the thought that it is also a source of fun and employee engagement.
attract businesses employ entire half merely plenty raise subsidize
There would be plenty of justification to raise revenues in order to subsidize businesses that employ low-wage workers. But there can be no justification for pandering to the economy's entire bottom half merely to attract its votes.
decide driven innovate invest jobs thus whether
Entrepreneurs' willingness to innovate or just to invest - and thus create new jobs - is driven by their 'animal spirits,' as they decide whether to leap into the void.
future lever outcome picture
Entrepreneurs have only the murkiest picture of the future in which they are making their bets, and also there is ambiguity: they don't know when they push this lever or that lever that the outcome is going to be what they think it is going to be - there is the law of unanticipated consequences.
ceos hit invest next quarter
There's such a preoccupation with liquidity and such an unwillingness to invest beyond the horizon of the next quarter and making sure that the CEOs hit their quarterly earnings.