Edmund Phelps — SPARQNOW

At-a-Glance

Recipient of the 2006 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences
McVickar Professor Emeritus of Political Economy at Columbia University since 2022
Founding director of Columbia's Center on Capitalism and Society from 2001
Developed the natural rate of unemployment, a key concept in macroeconomic theory
Known for research on the sources of economic growth and the golden rule savings rate

Biography

Edmund Strother Phelps was an American economist and the recipient of the 2006 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. Early in his career, he conducted research at Yale's Cowles Foundation in the first half of the 1960s, focusing on the sources of economic growth. His demonstration of the golden rule savings rate, a concept related to work by John von Neumann, initiated extensive research into national savings and investment for future generations.