1996 Nemmers Prize in Economics Recipient

Thomas J. Sargent

For his work in both empirical and theoretical macroeconomics, and pioneering research analyzing how consumers and firms form expectations about future government policies

Thomas J. Sargent is David Rockefeller Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

Sargent is internationally known for his work in both empirical and theoretical macroeconomics. He did pioneering research analyzing how consumers and firms form expectations about future government policies. His work has been instrumental in developing empirical versions of the theory of rational expectations.

The relationship between private market expectations and the effects of government policy was one of the crucial missing links in Keynesian models. Sargent applied the theory of rational expectations to study the causes and cures of hyperinflations, the correlation between unemployment and inflations, the term structure of interest rates and the interaction between monetary and fiscal policies. He has also made important contributions to monetary theory.

A member of the University of Chicago faculty since 1991 and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution since 1987, Sargent was a professor at the University of Minnesota for sixteen years. He has served as a research associate since 1979 at the National Bureau of Economic Research and as an advisor since 1971 to the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.

Sargent received his bachelor's degree from the University of California at Berkeley and his Ph.D. from Harvard University. He is author of two leading textbooks in graduate macroeconomics.

Sargent was elected a fellow of both the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1983. His numerous books on economic theory include Rational Expectations and Inflation, published in 1992, and Bounded Rationality in Macroeconomics, published in 1993. Elected a fellow of the Econometric Society in 1976, Sargent has served as president of the Society for Economic Dynamics and Control.