Okun, Phillips and Our Economy

If you want to be remembered in economics, get yourself a curve. There’s the Lorenz curve, the Laffer curve, the Kuznets curve, and, probably most famous, the Phillips curve. Phillips was A.W. Phillips, an economist from New Zealand who worked in London. In 1958 he drew a curve connecting the dots between inflation and unemployment. When unemployment went down, inflation went up. The Phillips Curve took the economics profession by storm.