Edmund Phelps received his B.A. at Amherst College in 1955 and his Ph.D. at Yale in 1959. After several years at Pennsylvania and Yale, he became Professor of Economics at Columbia in 1971 and McVickar Professor of Political Economy in 1982. He is the founding director of the Centre on Capitalism and Society, formed in 2001 and now in the Earth Institute at Columbia.

He first became known for contributions to the understanding of productivity growth – research, education and the ‘golden rule’ – at Yale’s Cowles Foundation in the early 1960s. His most seminal work was his rudimentary theory of a ‘natural’ rate of unemployment – its existence, how its size is determined and how market forces may drive unemployment from it.

Phelps was Senior Advisor to the project ‘Italy in Europe’ of Italy’s CNR from 1997 to 2000, co-organizer of the Villa Mondragone seminars in Rome from 1990 to 2000. He was a consultant for the OECD in 1999, the CBO in 1994, the EC in 1987, Banca d’Italia in 1985, the IMF in 1983 and 1985, the FRB in 1983, the Senate Finance Committee in 1975 and the U.S. Treasury Department in 1972.

Phelps is the recipient of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Economic Science. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences (USA) in 1981at age 47. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the Econometric Society. In 2000 he was made a Distinguished Fellow of the American Economic Association. He has been awarded honorary doctorates from a number of universities and colleges.