"The Ghosts I Called I Can't Get Rid of Now": The Keynes-Tinbergen-Friedman-Phillips critique of Keynesian macroeconometrics

Leeson, R. (1998) "The Ghosts I Called I Can't Get Rid of Now": The Keynes-Tinbergen-Friedman-Phillips critique of Keynesian macroeconometrics. History of Political Economy, 30 (1). pp. 51-94.

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Abstract

This essay is part of a wider investigation into the political economy of the Keynesian revolution and the monetarist counten-evolution. I examine the much-publicized dispute between those followers of Keynes who presented econometric evidence in favor of a Phillips curve tradeoff, and those monetarists who presented countereconometric evidence. I argue that the collapse of the Keynesian Phillips curve vindicated a critique of macroeconometric practices, which was jointly authored by John Maynard Keynes, Jan Tinbergen, Milton Friedman, and A. W. H. "Bill" Phillips. This analysis is informed by the usual sources plus two documents that have been recently rediscovered (Phillips's private papers and records of the London School of Economics [LSE] Staff Seminar on Methodology, Measurement and Testing- refen-ed to as M2T) and two essays by Keynes that have been overlooked in this context (l938a, 1938b).