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Mark Trumbull
Sometimes asking questions is as important – maybe even more important – than finding answers. This thought dates back at least to Socrates, and it’s been reflected in many a great teacher or thinker since.
This week Robert Lucas, a University of Chicago economist who died Monday, is being remembered by his peers as perhaps the most important economist of his generation – one who in some ways reframed the entire field of “macro,” researching the economy as a whole.
Yet this Nobel laureate is nowhere near as famous as, say, his Chicago colleague Milton Friedman. And by many accounts, his prescriptions were often wrong as well as right. Even the phrase he’s most associated with – “rational expectations” – wasn’t original to him. Yet by raising a big question, and then more of them, he prompted others throughout the economics field to think in fresh ways.
In a 1972 paper, he asked, in effect, whether a policy like expanding the money supply made sense if one doesn’t take into account the way people rationally adjust their expectations (and actions) as a result. If you think a policy will cause inflation but not much growth, for instance, you’ll behave accordingly. As a businessperson, you won’t go out and hire more workers.
He isn’t remembered as unlocking a formula for economic growth. But he was fascinated by the question of why some nations raise living standards for their people faster than others.
“I do not see how one can look at figures like these without seeing them as representing possibilities,” he wrote in a 1988 paper. “Is there some action a government of India could take that would lead the Indian economy to grow like Indonesia’s or Egypt’s? If so, what, exactly? If not, what is it about the ‘nature of India’ that makes it so? The consequences for human welfare involved in questions like these are simply staggering: Once one starts to think about them, it is hard to think about anything else.”
What became known as the “Lucas critique” of economic models has come in for its own critiques over time. But it’s still influential today. Dr. Lucas is a reminder that someone can make a difference just by posing questions that matter.
