Alban William Phillips (1914 – March, 1975) was an influential economist in the middle of the twentieth century. Phillips spent most of his academic career at the London School of Economics (LSE). His most well-known contribution is the Phillips curve, which he first described in 1958. He also designed and built the MONIAC hydraulic economics computer in 1949. 1914 (MCMXIV) was a common year starting on Thursday. ... 1975 (MCMLXXV) was a common year starting on Wednesday. ... An economist is an individual who studies, develops, and applies theories and concepts from economics, and writes about economic policy. ... The London School of Economics and Political Science, often referred to as the London School of Economics or simply the LSE, is a specialist university[2] and a constituent college of the federal University of London, located on Houghton Street in Central London, off the Aldwych and next to the... In macroeconomics, the Phillips curve is a supposed inverse relationship between inflation and unemployment. ... 1958 (MCMLVIII) was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Moniac Computer The MONIAC (Monetary National Income Automatic Computer) also known as the Phillips Hydraulic Computer and the Financephalograph, was created in 1949 by Bill Phillips to model the national economic processes of the United Kingdom, while Phillips was a student at the London School of Economics (LSE), The MONIAC...

Early life

William Phillips was the son of a New Zealand dairy farmer. He left New Zealand before finishing school to work in Australia at a variety of jobs, including crocodile hunter and cinema manager. In 1937 Phillips headed to China, but had to escape to Russia when Japan invaded China. He travelled across Russia on the Trans-Siberian Railway and made his way to Britain in 1938, where he studied electrical engineering. At the outbreak of World War II, Phillips joined in the United Kingdom’s Royal Air Force and was sent to Singapore. When Singapore fell, he escaped on the troopship Empire State, which came under attack before safely arriving in Java. When Java, too, was overrun Phillips was captured by the Japanese, and spent three and a half years interned in a prisoner of war camp in Indonesia. During this period he learned Chinese from other prisoners, repaired and miniaturised a secret radio, and fashioned a secret water boiler for tea which he hooked into the camp lighting system. In 1946 he was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) for his war service. After the war he moved to London and began studying sociology at the London School of Economics, because of his fascination with prisoners of war's ability to organize themselves. But he became bored with sociology and interested in Keynesian theory, so he switched his course to economics. Genera Mecistops Crocodylus Osteolaemus See full taxonomy. ... Trans-Siberian line in red; Baikal Amur Mainline in green. ... This article is becoming very long. ... The Royal Air Force (RAF) is the air force branch of the British Armed Forces. ... Java (Indonesian, Javanese, and Sundanese: Jawa) is an island of Indonesia, and the site of its capital city, Jakarta. ... Geneva Convention definition A prisoner of war (POW) is a soldier, sailor, airman, or marine who is imprisoned by an enemy power during or immediately after an armed conflict. ... Commanders Badge of the Order of the British Empire The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by King George V. The Order includes five classes in civil and military divisions; in decreasing order of seniority, these are... London (pronounced ) is the capital city of England and the United Kingdom. ... Social interactions of people and their consequences are the subject of sociology studies. ... Keynesian economics (pronounced ), also called Keynesianism, or Keynesian Theory, is an economic theory based on the ideas of 20th century British economist John Keynes. ...

Economics career

Moniac Computer

While Phillips was a student at the LSE he developed an analogue computer which used hydraulics to model the workings of the British economy. It was called the Monetary National Income Automatic Computer or MONIAC, which was probably a backronym reminiscent of the American ENIAC computer. The flow of water through its tanks and pipes accurately simulated the flow of money through the economy. The MONIAC Computer’s ability to model the subtle interaction of economic parameters, such as tax rates and investment rates made it a powerful tool for its time. Phillips first demonstrated MONIAC to a number of leading economists at the LSE in 1949. It was very well received and Phillips was soon offered a teaching position at the LSE. He advanced from assistant lecturer in 1951 to professor in 1958. Image File history File links Download high-resolution version (553x737, 70 KB)MONIAC Computer. ... Image File history File links Download high-resolution version (553x737, 70 KB)MONIAC Computer. ... An analog computer (American English) or analogue computer (British English) is a form of computer using electronic or mechanical phenomena to model the problem being solved by using one kind of physical quantity to represent another. ... Table of Hydraulics and Hydrostatics, from the 1728 Cyclopaedia. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... ENIAC ENIAC, short for Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer[1], was the first large-scale, electronic, digital computer capable of being reprogrammed to solve a full range of computing problems[2], although earlier computers had been built with some of these properties. ... Moniac Computer The MONIAC (Monetary National Income Automatic Computer) also known as the Phillips Hydraulic Computer and the Financephalograph, was created in 1949 by Bill Phillips to model the national economic processes of the United Kingdom, while Phillips was a student at the London School of Economics (LSE), The MONIAC...

His work focused on British data, and observed that in years when the unemployment rate was high, wages tended to be stable, or possibly fall. Conversely, when unemployment was low, wages rose rapidly. This sort of pattern had been noticed earlier by Irving Fisher, but in 1958 Phillips published his own work on the relationship between inflation and unemployment, illustrated by the Phillips Curve. Soon after the publication of Phillips' paper the idea that there was a trade-off between a strong economy and low inflation caught the imagination of academic economists and policy-makers alike. Paul Samuelson and Robert Solow wrote an influential article describing the possibilities suggested by the Phillips curve in the context of the United States. What people think of as the Phillips curve has changed substantially over time, but remains an important feature of macroeconomic analysis of economic fluctuations. Had he lived longer, Phillips' contributions may have been worthy of a Nobel prize in economics. A wage is the amount of money paid for some specified quantity of labour. ... Irving Fisher, born (February 27, 1867 Saugerties, New York — April 29, 1947, New York) was an American economist, health campaigner, and eugenicist. ... In macroeconomics, the Phillips curve is a supposed inverse relationship between inflation and unemployment. ... Paul Anthony Samuelson Paul A. Samuelson (born May 15, 1915, in Gary, Indiana) is an American economist known for his work in many fields of economics. ... Robert Merton Solow (born August 23, 1924) is an American economist particularly known for his work on the theory of economic growth. ... Macroeconomics is the economics sub-field of study that considers aggregate behavior, and the study of the sum of individual economic decisions. ... Nobel Prize medal. ... Face-to-face trading interactions among on the New York Stock Exchange trading floor In the social sciences, economics is the study of human choice behavior and how it effects the production, distribution, and consumption of scarce resources. ...

Phillips made several other notable contributions to economics, particularly relating to stabilization policy. This approach to economics reflects his earlier training as an engineer, something that was evident in his construction of a physical model of an economy complete with pipes and water flowing around to represent the flow of transactions between different sectors.

He returned to Australia in 1967 for a position at Australian National University which allowed him to devote half his time to Chinese studies. In 1969 the effects of his war deprivations and smoking caught up with him. He had a stroke, prompting an early retirement and return to Auckland, New Zealand, where he died in March, 1975. The Australian National University (ANU), is a university located in Canberra, the national capital of Australia. ... For other uses, see Stroke (disambiguation). ... Auckland, in the North Island of New Zealand, is the largest urban area in New Zealand. ...

References

• Mike Hally, Electronic Brains: Stories from the Dawn of the Computer Age, Joseph Henry Press, 2005, ISBN 0-309-09630-8

External links

• "When Money Flowed Like Water" article from September 1995 Inc. magazine, accessed April 11, 2006