Martha Olney, UC Berkeley economics professor emerita, explains the forces behind inflation at the May 1 First Friday Forum in Lafayette.
Few economic forces touch daily life as viscerally as inflation. Whether it’s the price on a gas station marquee or the quiet sleight of hand at the grocery store — a smaller package of sugar at the same price — the phenomenon is impossible to ignore.
Yet for all its familiarity, inflation remains widely misunderstood. What exactly is it, how is it measured, what drives it, and who bears its heaviest burdens?
Martha Olney brings her teaching skills to these questions, with the ability to render complex economic theory accessible, and to show how competing economic frameworks illuminate different facets of the same problem.
Drawing on her most recent book – her first written for a general audience — Olney will trace the arc of inflation from the 1980s, explain the competing measures economists use to track and unpack the foundational concepts that inform the debate: supply and demand dynamics, the Phillips Curve and the role of inflationary expectations.
She will also examine the Federal Reserve’s dual mandate of price stability and full employment, and assess its credibility in the eyes of financial markets and the public alike.
Olney is a teaching professor emerita in economics at UC Berkeley, where she has been recognized repeatedly for distinguished teaching.
She has also held faculty positions at Stanford University and the University of Massachusetts Amherst and is the author/co-author of four economics textbooks. She’s also a recipient of the Jonathan Hughes Prize for Excellence in Teaching Economic History from the Economic History Association.
This free public program is Friday, May 1, at 1:30 p.m. in the sanctuary of Lafayette-Orinda Presbyterian Church (LOPC), 49 Knox Drive, Lafayette. The lecture is also online. Visit the First Friday Forum page at lopc.org/first-friday-forum, click “Watch,” and scroll to the bottom of the page. No registration required. A recording is available on the website post event.
