Tuesday, October 10, 2023 | 5:00 PM to 6:30 PM
Event Location:
Fordham University – Lincoln Center Campus
140 West 62 Street, McNally Amphitheatre | Ground Floor
PLEASE NOTE: Registration is now closed for this event.
Join us for an in-person event with one of the most important economists of his generation. Edmund Phelps developed a new understanding of unemployment and inflation and went on to rethink the roots of innovation. His work represents a lifelong project to put “people as we know them” into economic theory.
In his latest book, Phelps tells the story of his role in reshaping economic theory, offering a powerful personal account of a creative and rewarding career. My Journeys in Economic Theory charts two major phases of Phelps’s work, illuminating the breadth of his contributions to the field. First, introducing the expectations of wage setters and cofounding the “equilibrium” rate of unemployment, he built the microeconomic foundations for the employment theory pioneered by Keynes and Hicks. More recently, he conceived a theory of “mass flourishing” superseding Schumpeter and Solow’s conception of the process of innovating—a theory in which individuals’ creativity and society’s dynamism fuel grassroots innovation and generate job satisfaction in the process.
Phelps recounts his vivid experiences in the world of economics—fierce arguments, competition and collaboration, and the good fortune of time spent among some great figures—as well as his relationships with luminaries such as John Rawls, Thomas Nagel, Paul Samuelson and Paul Volcker. At its core, this book shares the joy of intellectual achievement: the excitement of coming up with a new idea that radically departs from prevailing views and the satisfaction of exercising one’s own ingenuity instead of applying or developing others’ models. Telling the story of a life packed with intellectual adventure, My Journeys in Economic Theory provides a profound vision of a dynamic, modern economy that offers lives rich with creativity and meaning.
About the Speakers
Edmund Phelps, the winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2006, is the founding director of the Center on Capitalism and Society and McVickar Professor Emeritus of Political Economy at Columbia University.
Richard Sylla, professor emeritus of economics and the former Henry Kaufman Professor of the History of Financial Institutions and Markets at the NYU Stern School of Business, will moderate the Q&A portion of this program.
Free copies of the book will be distributed, and a reception will occur following the program.
This event is free, but registration is required and space is limited.
