Stagflation and the crossroad in macroeconomics: the struggle between structural and New Classical macroeconometrics

The article studies the 1978 macroeconomics conference titled "After the Phillips Curve", where Lucas and Sargent presented their fierce attack against structural macroeconometric models, "After Keynesian Macroeconomics". The article aims at enlarging the comprehension of changes in macroeconomics in the 1970s. It shows: 1) that Lucas and Sargent dit not tackle directly the issue of the explanation of stagflation; 2) but that the struggle between different methodological stances in the conference cannot be separated from the way macroeconomists interpreted stagflation; 3) that it was not an opposition between being in favor or against microfounded models, but rather on the way we build microfoundations; 4) finally that the study of the 1978 conference opens the doors for scrutinizing the evolution of institution macroeconometric models of the 1970s which were not totally overthrown by Lucas and Sargent's arguments.