Business I / Oil Shocks and Stagflation
Practice question · Multiple choice

Stagflation combined high inflation with high unemployment, which the Phillips curve said could not persist. Why was that a crisis for the theory and not just a bad decade?

Hints
  1. Ask what happens when people start ANTICIPATING the inflation policy creates.
  2. A relationship can hold in data and break when it is used.
Show the answer

D. Because the trade-off shifted once expectations adjusted

Why

This is the Lucas critique in the wild: a correlation exploited by policy stops holding, because the behaviour producing it adapts to the policy.

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