Thus Robert Lucas revolutionized modern macroeconomics

Obsessed with growth, this is who the Nobel Prize-winning economist was who in the 1970s, from the University of Chicago, demolished the Keynesian assumptions that were so fashionable at the time

He passed away on Monday, aged 85, Robert Lucas, Nobel Prize in 1995, one of the most important economists of the twentieth century. The most beautiful comment is from the former chief economist of the IMF, Olivier Blanchard: “A perfect example of creative destruction: it has made our intellectual lives more difficult, but much more exciting”. Lucas’ name is inextricably linked to a place, the University of Chicago where he graduated and where he returned in 1975 after spending a dozen (fruitful) years at Carnegie Mellon. He was one of the protagonists of the revolution which, starting in the 1970s, swept through macroeconomics, demolishing the Keynesian assumptions that until then had established themselves as the mainstream and laying the foundations for a new phase. Lucas’s intelligence was applied to a plurality of themes and research questions, so it is almost impossible to make a synthesis.