Peter Phillips

Sterling Professor of Economics and Professor of Statistics 

Peter Phillips, B.A. University of Aukland, Ph.D. London School of Economics and Political Science, faculty member at Yale since 1979: You are one of the world’s most distinguished econometricians, known for your extraordinary clarity of mind and intellectual power.

Your research contributions span the field of econometrics. A prolific scholar with more than 250 publications, your theoretical work has elevated the quality of applied research in economics, finance, and more widely in the social sciences. Major fields have emerged from your work in such areas as stationary and nonstationary time series and panel data, unit roots and cointegration, spurious regression, and partially identified models. 

Your contributions have been practical as well as theoretical: central banks use the powerful methods you have developed for detecting bubbles in asset prices in real-time. Your current research on random coefficient models of panel data, machine learning, and econometric modeling of climate change, makes clear that your significant contributions will not end with retirement. 

Attracted to Yale in part by the devotion and love for their discipline of three legendary Yale economists—Koopmans, Orcutt, and Tobin—you have shown that you share that devotion and love and, like them, have become legendary in passing it on to others. To date over ninety Ph.D. students have benefited from your superb mentorship, attentiveness, and collaborative instincts and are now prominent economists around the world. 

Your influence is wide in journalism and in education: You are the founding editor of the Cambridge journal Econometric Theory and of the Cambridge advanced textbook series Themes in Modern Econometrics. A corresponding fellow of the British Academy, the recipient of honorary degrees and many awards, you also hold appointments in Singapore and at the University of Southampton. Although a worldwide traveler, you have now returned to your home country of New Zealand, where you have long held a visiting position at your alma mater, the University of Aukland, and where your family resides. 

Brilliant economist and devoted Kiwi; your colleagues hope that, although you are far away, you retain warm feeling for your second home in New Haven, where you have made outstanding contributions and where we hope to see you again often.