Edward Prescott is a Senior Monetary Advisor at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. He also holds the W. P. Carey Chair at Arizona State University and is a Regents Professor. Prior to joining the ASU faculty in 2003, he held faculty positions at the University of Minnesota, the University of Chicago, Carnegie Mellon University, and the University of Pennsylvania.

In 2004 Prescott was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics, jointly with Finn Kydland, “for their contributions to dynamic macroeconomics: the time consistency of economic policy and the driving forces behind business cycles.” The research Prescott and Kydland did on time-inconsistency led to a focus on how central banks could be strengthened and made more independent in order to ensure their credibility in the face of short-term changes in the economy.

Kydland and Prescott have made significant contributions not only in macroeconomic analysis, but also in the practice of monetary and fiscal policy in many countries. In their seminal paper of 1982 “Time to Build and Aggregate Fluctuations” they showed that real, supply-side shocks by and large account for the business cycles in a well-functioning economy.

Prescott is also well known for his work on the Hodrick-Prescott Filter, used to smooth fluctuations in a time series.

http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economics/laureates/2004/prescott-autobio.html

http://www.minneapolisfed.org/research/prescott/