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Date:
Fri Mar 31 17:19:00 2006
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From:
[log in to unmask] (Robert Leeson)
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================= HES POSTING ================= 
 
In 1952, Milton Friedman raised with A.W.H. Phillips how to model 
inflationary expectations (Phillips was a PhD student on his way to becoming 
one of the most perceptive stabilisation theorist of his generation). 
Phillips wrote down for Friedman on the back of an envelope the adaptive 
inflationary expectations formula which was later used generally by Phillip 
Cagan (1956) and Mark Nerlove (1958) and specifically by Friedman and Phelps 
to undermine the high inflation Phillips curve trade-off.  The first 
Expectations Augmented Phillips curve was provided by Phillips (EJ 1954) in 
his theoretical Phillips curve essay.  Yet the mythology persists that one 
of the defects in Phillips' curve was the neglect of inflationary 
expectations.   
 
I am curious to hear from others suggestions as to why Phillips was not 
cited at the time.  Certainly at Cambridge for a large part of this century 
there was a 'common pool' view of knowledge: anyone sordid enough to get 
possessive about their own individual contribution would probably find their 
invitations drying up.  Chicago was also a dynamic output-orientated place - 
although the introductory essay of the volume in which Cagan made first use 
of what he now calls "Phillips' Adaptive Inflationary Formula" was devoted, 
in part, to finding citations from an interwar Chicago oral tradition that 
others (especially Don Patinkin) have found to be tenuous.    
 
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