Join the Department of Economics and Economica as Prof Nick Bloom delivers this 2024 Economica-Phillips lecture.

The 1958 Phillips curve was a masterpiece of macro analysis, showing a highly curved relationship between wage inflation and unemployment. But this was linearized by Samuelson and Solow in 1960, and for the next 60 years moved from being a “curve” to a “line”. We revisit this using rich global macro data and UK micro data from the Bank of England Decision Maker Panel to argue the “curve” is alive and well. Indeed, the curviness of the Phillips relationship was one factor behind the great inflation of 2021-2024. Firm-level prices rise about 3 times faster in response to positive demand shocks than they fall in response to negative demand shocks. So, the large cross-sectional spread of demand shocks in the COVID drop and rebound seems to have generated a surge in overall inflation. It appears the importance (and curviness) of Phillip’s ground-breaking 1958 paper continues to live on.

Meet our speaker and chair

Nick Bloom (@I_Am_NickBloom) is the William Eberle Professor of Economics at Stanford University. His research focuses on working from home, management practices and uncertainty. He worked at the UK Treasury, McKinsey & Company and the IFS, and he has a PhD from University College London.

Nick is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the recipient of the Guggenheim and Sloan Fellowships, the Frisch Medal, National Science Foundation Career Award and was elected to Bloomberg50.

Wouter den Haan is a Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics, research fellow and programme director of the CEPR, and co-director of the Centre for Macroeconomics. Currently, his main areas of interest are business cycles, frictions in financial and labour markets, and numerical methods to solve models with a large number of heterogeneous agents.

More about this event

The Department of Economics (@LSEEcon) is one of the biggest and best in the world, with expertise across the full spectrum of mainstream economics. The Department’s research has been utilised in efforts to tackle major global challenges such as climate change; economic instability; economic development and growth; and national and global productivity and inequality, often catalysing profound shifts in policy debate and formulation.

The in-house journal, Economica (@EconomicaLSE), is an internationally renowned peer reviewed journal, covering research in all branches of economics. Since 2016, Economica has held two lectures per year, the Economica Phillips and Economica Coase.

Hashtag for this event: #LSEPhillips