Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Foreword by Arthur Brown
- Preface by Robert Leeson
- Part I Bill Phillips: Some Memories and Reflections
- Part II The Phillips Machine
- Part III Dynamic Stabilisation
- 15 The optimal control articles
- 16 Stabilisation policy in a closed economy
- 17 Stabilisation policy and the time-forms of lagged responses
- 18 Arnold Tustin's The Mechanism of Economic Systems: a review
- 19 Michel Kalecki's Theory of Economic Dynamics: An Essay on Cyclical and Long-Run Changes in the Capitalist Economy: a review
- 20 The growth articles
- 21 A simple model of employment, money and prices in a growing economy
- 22 Employment, inflation and growth
- 23 Economic policy and development
- 24 The famous Phillips Curve article
- 25 The relation between unemployment and the rate of change of money wage rates in the United Kingdom, 1861-1957
- 26 Discussion of Dicks-Mireaux and Dow's The Determinants of Wage Inflation: United Kingdom, 1946-1956
- 27 The Melbourne paper
- 28 Wage changes and unemployment in Australia, 1947-1958
- 29 Phillips and stabilisation policy as a threat to stability
- 30 The Phillips Curve in macroeconomics and econometrics
- 31 Bill Phillips' contribution to dynamic stabilisation policy
- 32 A Left Keynesian view of the Phillips Curve trade-off
- 33 Interactions with a fellow research engineer-economist
- 34 Does modern econometrics replicate the Phillips Curve?
- 35 The famous Phillips Curve article: a note on its publication
- Part IV Econometrics
- References
- Index of names
- Index of subjects
27 - The Melbourne paper
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 May 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Foreword by Arthur Brown
- Preface by Robert Leeson
- Part I Bill Phillips: Some Memories and Reflections
- Part II The Phillips Machine
- Part III Dynamic Stabilisation
- 15 The optimal control articles
- 16 Stabilisation policy in a closed economy
- 17 Stabilisation policy and the time-forms of lagged responses
- 18 Arnold Tustin's The Mechanism of Economic Systems: a review
- 19 Michel Kalecki's Theory of Economic Dynamics: An Essay on Cyclical and Long-Run Changes in the Capitalist Economy: a review
- 20 The growth articles
- 21 A simple model of employment, money and prices in a growing economy
- 22 Employment, inflation and growth
- 23 Economic policy and development
- 24 The famous Phillips Curve article
- 25 The relation between unemployment and the rate of change of money wage rates in the United Kingdom, 1861-1957
- 26 Discussion of Dicks-Mireaux and Dow's The Determinants of Wage Inflation: United Kingdom, 1946-1956
- 27 The Melbourne paper
- 28 Wage changes and unemployment in Australia, 1947-1958
- 29 Phillips and stabilisation policy as a threat to stability
- 30 The Phillips Curve in macroeconomics and econometrics
- 31 Bill Phillips' contribution to dynamic stabilisation policy
- 32 A Left Keynesian view of the Phillips Curve trade-off
- 33 Interactions with a fellow research engineer-economist
- 34 Does modern econometrics replicate the Phillips Curve?
- 35 The famous Phillips Curve article: a note on its publication
- Part IV Econometrics
- References
- Index of names
- Index of subjects
Summary
Bill Phillips wrote chapter 27 in 1959 while visiting the University of Melbourne, so it is convenient to refer to it as the ‘Melbourne paper’. As he related to Conrad Blyth (1978, xvi-xvii), he had then just finished his 1958 ‘Phillips Curve’ Economica article (chapter 25) which was
a rush job. I had to go off on sabbatical leave to Melbourne; but in that case it was better for understanding to do it simply and not wait too long.
Blyth also explained that ‘Bill himself was not very happy with the stable wage assumption found in popular Keynesian models’. The simple Phillips Curve concept was a first attempt to explain wage inflation and adapt Keynesian models so that they could include the reality of rising prices and wages. While the Melbourne paper was never formally published, it can be argued that it was a big advance on the original Phillips Curve work. Had he gone on with it he might himself have modified the simple Phillips Curve concept in ways which others were subsequently to do. The paper is of considerable interest, but it should be said at the outset that it was a working paper, and that Bill Phillips recognised it to be unfinished. There were data problems, the regression results cited in the endnotes do not include standard errors, Rs or other statistics and the theory was in need of tidying up.
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- Information
- A. W. H. Phillips: Collected Works in Contemporary Perspective , pp. 263 - 268Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2000
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