The Nobel committee said Edmund Phelps was awarded the prize for "extending our understanding of trade-offs between economic objectives, such as inflation and employment." Central to this was Phelps's groundbreaking research in the 1960s on what became known as the non-accelerating inflation natural rate of unemployment, or simply, the NAIRU (an abbreviation which he abhors). Throughout his career, Phelps has combined mathematical rigour with an unflinching dedication to examine macroeconomics'