Lucas, Robert E., Jr.

Lucas, Robert E., Jr.

(born Sept. 15, 1937, Yakima, Wash., U.S.) U.S. economist. He studied at the University of Chicago and began teaching there in 1975. He questioned the influence of John Maynard Keynes in macroeconomics and the efficacy of government intervention in domestic affairs. He criticized the Phillips curve for failing to provide for the dampened expectations of companies and workers in an inflationary economy. His theory of rational expectations, which suggests that individuals may alter the expected results of national fiscal policy by making private economic decisions based on anticipated results, won him the 1995 Nobel Prize. See also econometrics; inflation.

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Lucas, Robert E., Jr. (1937–  ) economist; born in Yakima, Wash. He was a professor of economics at Carnegie Mellon (1970–74) before joining the faculty at the University of Chicago (1974). He was a supporter of the rational expectations theory, which concludes that because expectations of economic agents are "rational," monetary and fiscal policy only affect output and unemployment for a short time.