Dr. Robert Lucas Jr. — Profile, Specialty, Credentials & Public Visibility

Summary

Updated 2026-06-09

He rewired how economists think about expectations — the idea that people aren't blindly backward-looking but adjust their behavior based on what policy will likely do next. That shift, called rational expectations, made him the most influential macroeconomist of the late 20th century.

Biography

About

Robert Emerson Lucas Jr. was born September 15, 1937, and spent his career at the University of Chicago. He became the central figure in new classical macroeconomics by developing and applying the hypothesis of rational expectations — the notion that individuals form predictions using all available information, including the effects of policy itself. That work transformed how the field approached economic policy and earned him the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1995. N. Gregory Mankiw later called him "the most influential macroeconomist of the last quarter of the 20th century."…

Voice

In their own words

Sourced, dated quotes from Robert Lucas Jr.

Robert Lucas Jr.

said2008

I guess everyone is a Keynesian in a foxhole.

— Robert E. Lucas, to Justin Fox, quoted in Bob Lucas on the comeback of Keynesianism (2008).

Robert Lucas Jr.

said1994

In the present decade, the U.S. economy has undergone its first major depression since the 1930’s, to the accompaniment of inflation rates in excess of 10 percent per annum.

— As contained in The Rational Expectations Revolution: Readings From the Front Line, Preston J. Miller, MIT Press (reprint 1994), pp. 5-6

Robert Lucas Jr.

said22 Jul 1988