If Bill Phillips were Governor...? Some implications of his work for contemporary macroeconomic policy

Grant M Scobie

No 21096, Working Paper Series from Victoria University of Wellington, Chair in Public Finance

Abstract: The purpose of this essay is to address the question: “Are there elements of Phillip's work that are still relevant today for macroeconomic policymaking today?” In undertaking this task, I will draw on the summary of his work from the second part of Allan Bollard's book "A Few Hares to Chase: The Economic Life and Times of Bill Phillips". But I will also cast the net a little wider to draw on the writings of others who have reviewed and built on the work of Phillips; and naturally, I will call on a number of the original papers by Phillips. However, any suggestion that I will fully capture all that has been written about Phillips, his life and work, must be summarily dismissed. Put “AWH Phillips economist” into Google search and one gets 201,100 links; for “Phillips curve” a mere 717,000. The essay proceeds as follows. Phillips’ work is grouped into four broad areas: - Inflation and Unemployment - Dynamic Stabilisation and Optimal Control - Economic growth - Econometrics This is followed by a brief discussion of forecasting and policy models with a sketch of their use in selected countries. A concluding section follows.

Keywords: Phillips; Bill; Macroeconomic policy; New Zealand (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://ir.wgtn.ac.nz/handle/123456789/21096

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:vuw:vuwcpf:21096

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Paper Series from Victoria University of Wellington, Chair in Public Finance School of Accounting & Commercial Law, Victoria University of Wellington, PO Box 600, Wellington, New Zealand. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Library Technology Services ().