Nobel laureate professor of macroeconomics Robert Lucas has died at the age of 85.

The announcement was made by the University of Chicago, where he began teaching as a professor in 1975 and remained professor emeritus until his death. The publication did not indicate the cause of death.

In awarding the 1995 Nobel Prize in Economics to Professor Lucas, the University of Chicago’s fifth economics laureate in six years, The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has named him “the most influential economist in macroeconomic research since 1970”.

His work, which became famous in the mid-1970s, called into question the macroeconomic conclusions of John Maynard Keynes about the effectiveness of government intervention in economic affairs. Lucas questioned the assumptions behind the Phillips curve, which were thought to show that the government could lower the unemployment rate by increasing inflation.

Lucas attended the University of Chicago, earning degrees in history (AB, 1959) and economics (Ph.D., 1964). He taught at Carnegie Mellon University from 1963 to 1974 before returning to Chicago to become a professor of economics in 1975.

More broadly, his work led to what is called the “policy failure proposition”, the idea that if people have rational expectations, policies that attempt to manipulate the economy by creating false expectations can make more “noise” in the economy. but will not improve it. economic performance.

Lucas has edited or co-edited several financial journals and was for a time president of the American Economic Association and the Econometric Society. In 2001, Lucas published Lectures on Economic Growth, a collection of his writings on economic growth.