Background
Azariadis, Costas was born on February 15, 1943 in Athens, Greece. Arrived in United States, 1969, naturalized, 1996. Son of Christos Gregory and Artemis Azariadis.
Azariadis, Costas was born on February 15, 1943 in Athens, Greece. Arrived in United States, 1969, naturalized, 1996. Son of Christos Gregory and Artemis Azariadis.
Diploma in Chemical Engineering, National.Tech. University, Athens, 1969. Doctor of Philosophy in Economics, Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh, 1975.
Assistant professor Brown University, 1973—1977. Associate professor University Pennsylvania, 1977—1983, professor, 1983—1992. Distinguished professor University of California at Los Angeles, 1992—2006, director, program dynamic economics, 1993—1997, 2000—2004.
Mallinckrodt university professor Washington University, St. Louis, since 2006, director, center dynamic economics, since 2006. Visiting fellow institute advanced study Hebrew University, 1977. Visiting associate professor Princeton University, 1980, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris, 1983.
Visiting fellow Instituto Nacional de Matemática Pura e Aplicada, Brazil, 1985. STICERD fellow London School of Economics, 1997. Visiting professor University Vienna, 2003.
Senior visiting scholar Federal Reserve Bank St. Louis, since 2006.
A combination of slow progress and lack of imagination has kept me working on the same substantive topics over the last decade. Unemployment is one of them, the effect of beliefs on equilibrium is the other. I became involved early on with the theory of implicit contracts which I saw as an attempt to say something interesting about sluggish prices and quantity rationing.
Advances, especially recent ones, in the incentives literature have made it possible for many of us to analyse involuntary underemployment in a rigorous way. Still, we have no satisfactory explanation of wage rigidity, no logically coherent theory of rationing, and no general equilibrium paradigm that places these labour-market phenomena in proper macroeconomic perspective. Much work remains to be done here.
Beliefs are something I always like to know more about.
How are they formed? How do they interact with equilibrium? What are ‘optimism’ and ‘pessimism’? Temporary equilibrium
says that beliefs drive equilibrium. The rational expectations literature requires beliefs to be validated by equilibrium. Which one is right? The answer is both.
The ‘sunspots’ literature, to which I contributed in the early 1980s, is an example of rational expectations equilibria which are completely driven by arbitrarily formed beliefs. The trouble with such equilibria is, of course, that there are too many of them. It is of some interest to know which, if any, are reachable from given prior beliefs, and how the economy behaves while beliefs and equilibrium converge.
If there is method in this madness, it must have something to do with a larger effort to build up the logical foundations of macroeconomics. I see my own work, past and future, as part of that larger effort.
Indiana trustee Forum Funds, Portland, Maine, since 1989. Member of Eliot Society.
Married Assimo Kravartoyannos, August 5, 1965. 1 child Cleo Vassiliki.
