Bill Phillips (economist)
New Zealand economist (1914–1975)
Alban William Housego "A. W." Phillips, MBE (18 November 1914 – 4 March 1975) was a New Zealand economist who spent most of his academic career as a professor of economics at the London School of Economics (LSE). He invented the Phillips curve relating level of employment and inflation in 1958. He also designed and built the MONIAC hydraulic computer macroeconomic model in 1949.
Early life
Phillips was born at Te Rehunga near Dannevirke, New Zealand, to Harold Housego Phillips, a dairy farmer, and his wife, Edith Webber, a schoolteacher and postmistress. A mechanical aptitude began to emerge at an early age: at fifteen, Bill learned how to fix a motor vehicle engine, how to wire a shed for electrical lighting, build radios, and create a crude form of cinematography.
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 United Kingdom in 1938, where he studied electrical engineering.
World War II
At the outbreak of World War II, Phillips joined the 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.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1354377. VIAF identifies the subject as 193761900. The Library of Congress control number is no97040178. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1914, 1975, 1958 and 1949.
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This entry incorporates text from “Bill Phillips (economist)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.