Jump to content

Michael Woodford (economist)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Michael Woodford
Image
Woodford in 1972
Born
Michael Dean Woodford

1955 (age 70–71)
Massachusetts, U.S.
Academic background
Education
Timothy Kehoe[1]
Academic work
Discipline
School or tradition
New Keynesian economics
InstitutionsColumbia University
Awards
Website

Michael Dean Woodford (born 1955) is an American macroeconomist and monetary theorist who teaches at Columbia University. In 2026, he was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, along with Robert E. Hall.

Academic career

[edit]

Woodford was born in Massachusetts, in 1955.[2][3] He graduated with a B.A. from the University of Chicago in 1977 and a J.D. from Yale Law School in 1980.[4] He completed his Ph.D. in economics at MIT in 1983.[5]

He began his teaching career at Columbia, and then taught at Chicago and Princeton before returning to Columbia to accept the John Bates Clark chair in 2004.[6] He was awarded the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Prize Fellowship, which financed his research from 1981 to 1986. In 2007, he was awarded the Deutsche Bank Prize.[7] In 2024, he received both the Erwin Plein Nemmers Prize in Economics[8] and the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the category of "Economics and Finance".[9] In 2026, he was jointly awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with Robert E. Hall "for microeconomic foundations of macroeconomic stabilisation."[10]

Theoretical contributions

[edit]

Woodford's early research topics included sunspot equilibria[11] and imperfect competition.[12] He then worked on macroeconomic models with sticky prices. Working with Julio Rotemberg, he developed a model of the microfoundations of New Keynesian economics.[13] He later used this framework to study topics related to monetary policy, including the fiscal theory of the price level,[14] the effectiveness of monetary policy as consumers use more credit and less cash,[15] and inflation targeting rules.[16]

Woodford praised Knut Wicksell's advocacy of using the interest rate charged by central banks to maintain price stability. Woodford saw this as a remarkable insight, given that Wicksell was writing at a time when most monetary policy was based on the gold standard.[17] Woodford calls his own framework 'neo-Wicksellian', and he titled his textbook[clarification needed] on monetary policy in homage to Wicksell's work.[citation needed]

Much of Woodford's more recent research[18] addresses the implications of bounded rationality and deviations from rational expectations for macroeconomic dynamics and monetary and fiscal policy.[19][20][21]

Interest and Prices

[edit]

Woodford wrote an advanced textbook on monetary macroeconomics entitled Interest and Prices: Foundations of a Theory of Monetary Policy.[22][23] The book was awarded the Deutsche Bank Prize in 2007; the award citation stated that it had "quickly become the standard reference for monetary theory and analysis among academic economists and their colleagues at central banks."[7] The title Interest and Prices is a direct translation of Geldzins und Güterpreise, the title of a book published by Wicksell in German in 1898 and translated into English in 1923,[24][25] as well as a reference to Don Patinkin's Money, Interest and Prices.[18]

References

[edit]
  1. ↑ Woodford, Michael (1983), Essays in intertemporal economics. Ph.D. dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
  2. ↑ Wiseman, Paul; Dazio, Stefanie; Manenkov, Kostya (October 12, 2026). "2 American economists win Nobel for work on managing economic shocks". Associated Press. Retrieved October 15, 2026.
  3. ↑ Reid, Jenni (October 12, 2026). "Nobel prize in economics awarded to Robert E. Hall and Michael Woodford". CNBC. Retrieved October 15, 2026.
  4. ↑ "Curriculum Vitae MICHAEL WOODFORD July 2017" (PDF). columbia.edu.
  5. ↑ Woodford, Michael Dean (1983), Essays in Intertemporal Economics. Ph.D. dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
  6. ↑ "Biography – Michael Woodford". Retrieved October 12, 2026.
  7. 1 2 "Michael Woodford: The Prize Winner 2007". October 4, 2007.
  8. ↑ Erwin Plein Nemmers Prize in Economics 2024
  9. ↑ BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award 2024
  10. ↑ "Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2026". Nobel Foundation. October 12, 2026. Archived from the original on October 12, 2026. Retrieved October 12, 2026.
  11. ↑ Woodford, Michael (1990). "Learning to believe in sunspots". Econometrica. 58 (2): 287–307. doi:10.2307/2938205. JSTOR 2938205.
  12. ↑ Rotemberg, Julio; Woodford, Michael (1995). "Dynamic general equilibrium models with imperfectly competitive product markets". In Cooley, Thomas (ed.). Frontiers of Business Cycle Research. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-04323-X.
  13. ↑ Rotemberg, Julio J.; Woodford, Michael (1997). "An optimization-based econometric framework for the evaluation of monetary policy" (PDF). NBER Macroeconomics Annual. 12: 297–346. doi:10.1086/654340. JSTOR 3585236. S2CID 154438345.
  14. ↑ Woodford, Michael (2001). "Fiscal requirements for price stability" (PDF). Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking. 33 (3): 669–728. doi:10.2307/2673890. JSTOR 2673890. S2CID 2836780.
  15. ↑ Woodford, Michael (1998). "Doing without money: controlling inflation in a post-monetary world" (PDF). Review of Economic Dynamics. 1 (1): 173–219. doi:10.1006/redy.1997.0006. S2CID 15413387.
  16. ↑ Giannoni, Marc P.; Woodford, Michael (2005). "Optimal inflation targeting rules". In Bernanke, Ben; Woodford, Michael (eds.). The Inflation-Targeting Debate. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. pp. 93–172. ISBN 0-226-04472-6.
  17. ↑ (Woodford, 2003, p. 32)[full citation needed]
  18. 1 2 Tony Yates (October 13, 2026). "How Michael Woodford made modern macro relevant to central bankers". Financial Times. Retrieved October 13, 2026.
  19. ↑ Woodford, Michael (2013). "Macroeconomic Analysis without the Rational Expectations Hypothesis". Annual Review of Economics. 5 (1): 303–346.
  20. ↑ Woodford, Michael (2020). "Modeling Imprecision in Perception, Valuation, and Choice". Annual Review of Economics. 12 (1): 571–601.
  21. ↑ Woodford, Michael; Xie, Yinxi (2022). "Fiscal and monetary stabilization policy at the zero lower bound: Consequences of limited foresight". Journal of Monetary Economics. 125: 18–35.
  22. ↑ Woodford, Michael (2003). Interest and prices: Foundations of a theory of monetary policy. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-01049-8.
  23. ↑ Green, Edward (2005). "A review of Interest and Prices". Journal of Economic Literature. 43: 121–134. doi:10.1257/0022051053737799.
  24. ↑ kanopiadmin (August 18, 2014). "Interest and Prices". Mises Institute. Archived from the original on May 5, 2018. Retrieved November 16, 2021.
  25. ↑ Sanger, C. P.; Wicksell, Knut (September 1898). "Geldzins und Guterpreise". The Economic Journal. 8 (31): 384. doi:10.2307/2956550. JSTOR 2956550.
[edit]
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Michael_Woodford_(economist)&oldid=1381855865"