Milton Friedman

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Milton Friedman (July 31, 1912 – November 16, 2006) was an American economist and public intellectual who made major contributions to the fields of macroeconomics, microeconomics, economic history and statistics while advocating laissez-faire capitalism. In 1976, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics for his achievements in the fields of consumption analysis, monetary history and theory and for his demonstration of the complexity of stabilization policy.[1]

Western economists
20th-century economists
(Chicago School)
Milton Friedman
Name: Milton Friedman
Birth: July 31, 1912
Brooklyn, New York City
Death: November 16, 2006
San Francisco, California
School/tradition: Chicago School
Main interests: Economics, Political economy
Notable ideas: Monetarism, Permanent income hypothesis, Natural rate of unemployment;

According to The Economist, Friedman "was the most influential economist of the second half of the 20th century…possibly of all of it."[2] Alan Greenspan stated "There are very few people over the generations who have ideas that are sufficiently original to materially alter the direction of civilization. Milton is one of those very few people."[3] In his 1962 book Capitalism and Freedom, Friedman advocated minimizing the role of government in a free market as a means of creating political and social freedom. In his 1980 television series Free to Choose Friedman explained how the free market works, emphasizing that its principles have shown to solve social and political problems that other systems have failed to address adequately. His books and columns for Newsweek were widely read and even circulated underground behind the Iron Curtain.[4]

Starting as a Keynesian supporter of the New Deal and advocate of high taxes, Friedman moved to the right in the 1950s, along with his close friend George Stigler. Before the 1970s their advocacy of free markets was a minority view among economists during the "big government", high taxation, high regulation, welfare state era. His political philosophy, which Friedman himself considered classically liberal, stressed the advantages of the marketplace and the disadvantages of government intervention, shaping the outlook of American conservatives and libertarians. He adamantly argued that if capitalism, or economic freedom, is introduced into countries governed by totalitarian regimes that political freedom would tend to result. He lived to see his laissez-faire ideas embraced by the mainstream,[5] especially during the 1980s, a watershed decade for the acceptance of Friedman's ideas. His views of monetary policy, taxation, privatization and deregulation informed the policy of governments around the globe, especially the administrations of Ronald Reagan in the U.S. and Margaret Thatcher in Britain. His ideas were studied throughout the world, and played a major role in the transformation of China's economy.

Friedman's political positions were buttressed by a large number of technical articles covering a wide range of topics in economics and economic history, which gained the grudging respect of specialists by the early 1960s. His challenge to Keynesian models of economics were especially telling. His attempts to make monetarist theory into a policy solution for central bankers proved unworkable.[citation needed] His intellectual leadership of the Chicago School, which came to dominate theoretical economics by the 1970s, further strengthened his stature.

Contents

[edit] Biography

[edit] Early life and education, 1912-35

Friedman was born on July 31, 1912 in Brooklyn, N.Y. to a working family of Jewish immigrants from Austria-Hungary, more specifically from Bergsaß/Beregszász (Berehove) in modern Ukraine. He was the fourth and last child, and first son, of Sára Eszter Landau (1892-?) and Jenő Saul Friedman.[6], both of whom worked as dry goods merchants. Shortly after Milton's birth, the family relocated to Rahway, New Jersey. A gifted student, Friedman graduated from Rahway High School in 1928, shortly before his 16th birthday.

Friedman was educated at Rutgers University (B.A., 1932). (As his father had died in 1928, Friedman had to pay his own way through university.) He specialized in Mathematics, and initially intended to become an actuary but found the exams cumbersome and quit. During his time at Rutgers, Friedman fell under the influence of two economics professors, Arthur F. Burns and Homer Jones. At the height of the Great Depression, they convinced him that the study of Economics could help to solve the ongoing economic difficulties, and he ended up graduating with the equivalent of a double major in Mathematics and Economics.

Upon his graduation from Rutgers, Friedman turned down an offer to study Applied Mathematics at Brown University, instead accepting a scholarship to study Economics at the University of Chicago (M.A., 1933). During this year in Chicago, Friedman's intellectual development was strongly influenced by Jacob Viner, Frank Knight, and Henry Simons. It was also during this time at Chicago that Friedman met his future wife, Rose Director (sister of prominent law professor Aaron Director).

After completing his master's degree, Friedman spent the next academic year (1933-34) on a postgraduate fellowhip at Columbia University, where he studied statistics with renowned statistician Harold Hotelling.

He was back in Chicago for 1934-35, spending the year working as a research assistant for Henry Schultz, who was then working on his Theory and Measurement of Demand. During this year, Friedman formed what would prove to be lifelong friendships with George Stigler and W. Allen Wallis.

[edit] Federal service, 1935-43

Friedman was unable to find academic employment, so in 1935, he followed his friend W. Allen Wallis to Washington, D.C., where Roosevelt's New Deal was "a lifesaver" for many young economists.

At this stage, Friedman said that he and his wife "regarded [the job-creation programs] appropriate responses to the critical situation," such as the WPA, CCC, and PWA "but not "the price- and wage-fixing measures of the National Recovery Administration and the Agricultural Adjustment Administration."[7] He saw price controls as interfering with what he considered an essential signaling mechanism to help resources go where they are most valued. However, Friedman later concluded that all government intervention associated with the New Deal was "the wrong cure for the wrong disease," arguing that simply the money supply should have been expanded.[8] In Monetary History of the United States he argues that the Great Depression was not caused by Federal Reserve actions but could have been alleviated by Fed policies before 1933 to expand the money supply.

In 1935, he began work at the National Resources Committee which was then working on a large consumer budget survey. Ideas from this project later became a part of his Theory of the Consumption Function.

In fall 1937, Friedman moved to the National Bureau of Economic Research to assist Simon Kuznets in his work on professional income. This work led to their jointly-authored Incomes from Independent Professional Practice, which introduced the concepts of permanent and transitory income, which were a major component of the Permanent Income Hypothesis which Friedman worked out in greater detail in the 1950s. The book hypothesizes that professional licensing artificially restricts the supply of services and raises prices. In 1945, Friedman submitted this book (completed in 1940) to Columbia University as his doctoral dissertation.

In 1940, Friedman was appointed an assistant professor teaching Economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, but encountered anti-Semitism in the Economics department and decided to return to government service.[9]

In 1941-43, he worked on wartime tax policy for the Federal Government, as an advisor to senior officials of the United States Department of the Treasury. As a Treasury spokesman in 1942 he advocated a Keynesian policy of taxation, and during this time he helped to invent the payroll withholding tax system.[10]

In his autobiography, he comments on "how thoroughly Keynesian I was then."[11] As Friedman grew older he reversed himself and in 2006 said, "You know, it's a mystery as to why people think Roosevelt's policies pulled us out of the Depression. The problem was that you had unemployed machines and unemployed people. How do you get them together by forming industrial cartels and keeping prices and wages up?"[12]

[edit] Academic career, 1943-77

In 1943, Friedman joined the Division of War Research at Columbia University (headed by W. Allen Wallis and Henry Hotelling), where he spent the rest of the war years working as a mathematical statistician, focusing on problems of weapons design, military tactics, and metallurgical experiments.

As noted in the previous section, in 1945, Friedman submitted Incomes from Independent Professional Practice (co-authored with Kuznets and completed in 1940) to Columbia, which subsequently awarded him a Ph.D. in 1946.

Milton and Rose Friedman's son, David Director Friedman was born during their time at Columbia, on February 2, 1945.

Friedman spent the 1945-46 academic year teaching at the University of Minnesota (where his friend George Stigler was employed)

In 1946, Friedman accepted an offer to teach economic theory at the University of Chicago (a position opened by Jacob Viner's departure to Princeton University). Friedman would stay at the University of Chicago for the next thirty years. There he helped build a close-knit intellectual community that produced a number of Nobel Prize winners, known collectively as the Chicago School of Economics.

At the same time he moved to the University of Chicago, Arthur Burns, who was then the head of the National Bureau of Economic Research, asked Friedman to rejoin the Bureau's staff. He accepted the invitation, and assumed responsibility for the Bureau's inquiry into the role of money in the business cycle. As a result, he founded the "Workshop in Money and Banking" (the "Chicago Workshop"), which led a revival in monetary studies. During the latter half of the 1940s, Friedman began a collaboration with Anna Schwartz, an economic historian at the Bureau, which would ultimately result in the 1963 publication of a book co-authored by Friedman and Schwartz, A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960.

Friedman spent the latter part of 1950 in Paris, where he assisted the US administrators of the Marshall Plan in formulating their response to the Schuman Declaration. This led Friedman to the study of floating exchange rates which resulted in his The Case for Flexible Exchange Rates.

Friedman spent the 1954-55 academic year as a Visiting Fellow at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. At the time, the Cambridge economics faculty was deeply divided into a Keynesian majority (including Joan Robinson and Richard Kahn) and a virulently anti-Keynesian minority (headed by Dennis Robertson). Friedman speculates that he was invited to the fellowship because his extreme laissez-faire views were unacceptable to both of the Cambridge factions, a fact which highlights how far out of the mainstream Friedman was in the 1950s.

In 1962, in his first major salvo as a public intellectual, Friedman published Capitalism and Freedom, a major defense of capitalism and critique of the New Deal and the emerging welfare state. The book would eventually sell half a million copies.

In 1964, Friedman served as an economic adviser to Barry Goldwater during his failed presidential campaign. Like Friedman, Goldwater had come to reject the New Deal and called for a return to laissez-faire economic principles. This position was extreme in 1964, but gained momentum over the next two decades, finally culminating in the presidency of Ronald Reagan.

In 1966, Friedman began publishing a tri-weekly column for Newsweek magazine, giving his ideas wider public dissemination. (He would continue writing this column until 1983.)

In 1968, he served on Richard Nixon's committee of economic advisers. In 1969, Nixon appointed him to the Advisory Commission on an All-Volunteer Force (the "Gates Commission"), on which Friedman loudly advocated against the draft and in favor of a voluntary military, a result which was achieved in the US in 1973.

In 1975, Friedman was a keynote speaker at a high-profile economic conference in Santiago, Chile, where he paved the way for the economic programme designed by the so-called Chicago Boys. Friedman subsequently wrote on free market policies in the Chilean context. Given the Chilean regime's woeful human rights record, Friedman's meeting with Pinochet and his top advisors caused outrage among many of a left-leaning conviction and arguably tarred free-market reform with a similar brush.

[edit] Nobel Prize and Retirement, 1977-2006

In 1976, Friedman won the Nobel Prize in Economics "for his achievements in the fields of consumption analysis, monetary history and theory and for his demonstration of the complexity of stabilization policy."

In 1977, at age 65, Friedman retired from the University of Chicago after teaching there for thirty years. He and his wife moved to San Francisco. From 1977 on, he was affiliated with the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

In 1977, Friedman was approached by the Palmer R. Chitester Fund and asked to create a television program presenting his economic and social philosophy. The Friedmans worked on this project for the next three years, and in 1980, the ten-part series, entitled Free to Choose, aired on PBS. The companion book to the series (co-authored by Milton and Rose Friedman), also entitled Free to Choose, was the bestselling nonfiction book of 1980 and has since been translated into 14 foreign languages.

Friedman served as an unofficial adviser to Ronald Reagan during his 1980 presidential campaign, and then served on the President's Economic Policy Advisory Board for the rest of the Reagan Administration. In 1988, he received the National Medal of Science and Reagan honored him with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Milton Friedman is today known as one of the most influential economists of the 20th century.[13]

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Friedman continued to write op-eds and appear in the media. He made several trips to Eastern Europe and to China.

A proponent of school vouchers since the 1950s, in 1996, the Friedmans established the Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation to advocate for school vouchers.

The Friedmans' memoirs, Two Lucky People by Milton and Rose Friedman, were published in 1998.

Milton Friedman died at the age of 94 in San Francisco on November 16, 2006 of heart failure.[14][15] Friedman's son is the philosopher and economist David D. Friedman. Noted fiscal commentator Sam Leverenz said to Friedman on his deathbed "And so the greatest mind of our generation has passed."

[edit] Awards

[edit] Scholarly contributions

Friedman was best known for reviving interest in the money supply as a determinant of the nominal value of output, that is, the quantity theory of money. Monetarism is the set of views associated with modern quantity theory. Its origins can be traced back to the 16th century School of Salamanca or even further but Friedman's contribution is largely responsible for its modern formulation. He co-authored, with Anna Schwartz, A Monetary History of the United States (1963), which sought to examine the role of the money supply and economic activity in U.S. history. A striking conclusion of their research was one regarding the role of money supply fluctuations as contributing to economic fluctuations. Or, as a Federal Reserve official (Ben Bernanke) joked on the occasion of Friedman's 90th birthday in 2002: "Regarding the Great Depression. You're right, we did it. We're very sorry." Several regression studies with David Meiselman in the 1960s suggested the primacy of the money supply over investment and government spending in determining consumption and output. These challenged a prevailing but largely untested view on their relative importance. Friedman's empirical research and some theory supported the conclusion that the short-run effect of a change in the money supply was primarily on output but that the longer-run effect was primarily on the price level.

Friedman was the leading proponent of the monetarist school of economic thought. He maintained that there is a close and stable link between inflation and the money supply, mainly that the phenomenon of inflation is to be regulated by controlling the amount of money poured into the national economy by the Federal Reserve Bank; he rejected the use of fiscal policy as a tool of demand management; and he held that the government's role in the guidance of the economy should be severely restricted. Friedman wrote extensively on the Great Depression, which he called the Great Contraction, arguing that it had been caused by an ordinary financial shock whose duration and seriousness were greatly increased by the subsequent contraction of the money supply caused by the misguided policies of the directors of the Federal Reserve. "The Fed was largely responsible for converting what might have been a garden-variety recession, although perhaps a fairly severe one, into a major catastrophe. Instead of using its powers to offset the depression, it presided over a decline in the quantity of money by one-third from 1929 to 1933.... Far from the depression being a failure of the free-enterprise system, it was a tragic failure of government."[16] Friedman also argued for the cessation of government intervention in currency markets, thereby spawning an enormous literature on the subject, as well as promoting the practice of freely floating exchange rates. Friedman's macroeconomic theories were soon displaced. His close friend George Stigler explained, "As is customary in science, he did not win a full victory, in part because research was directed along different lines by the theory of rational expectations, a newer approach developed by Robert Lucas, also at the University of Chicago."[17]

Friedman was also known for his refinement of the consumption function, the permanent income hypothesis (1957), which Friedman himself referred to as his best scientific work.[18] Other important contributions include his critique of the Phillips curve and the concept of the natural rate of unemployment (1968). Each of these has implications for the effect of monetary and fiscal policy on output in the short run and the long run.

Friedman's essay "The Methodology of Positive Economics" (1953) set the epistemological course for his own subsequent research and to a degree that of the Chicago School of Economics. There he argued that economics as science should be free of value judgments for it to be objective. Moreover, a useful economic theory should be judged not by its descriptive realism (hair color, etc.) but by its simplicity and fruitfulness as an engine of prediction.

[edit] Other public policy positions

Friedman also supported various libertarian policies such as decriminalization of drugs and prostitution. In addition, he headed the Nixon administration committee that researched the possibility of a move towards a paid/volunteer armed force, and played a large role in the abolition of the draft that took place in the 1970s in the U.S. He would later state that his role in eliminating the draft was his proudest accomplishment.[19] He served as a member of President Reagan's Economic Policy Advisory Board in 1981. In 1988, he received both the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the National Medal of Science. He said that he was a libertarian philosophically, but a member of the U.S. Republican Party for the sake of "expediency" ("I am a libertarian with a small 'l' and a Republican with a capital 'R.' And I am a Republican with a capital 'R' on grounds of expediency, not on principle.") But, he said, "I think the term classical liberal is also equally applicable. I don't really care very much what I'm called. I'm much more interested in having people thinking about the ideas, rather than the person."[20]

Friedman is supportive of the state provision of some public goods that the market is not seen as being able to provide. However, he sees the scope of such goods as being minimal. And, he argues that many of the services performed by government could be performed better by the private sector. Above all, if some public goods are provided by the state, he believes that they should not be a legal monopoly where private competition is prohibited. For, example, in response to the United States Post Office's legal monopoly on mail, he said, "there is no way to justify our present public monopoly of the post office. It may be argued that the carrying of mail is a technical monopoly and that a government monopoly is the least of evils. Along these lines, one could perhaps justify a government post office, but not the present law, which makes it illegal for anybody else to carry the mail. If the delivery of mail is a technical monopoly, no one else will be able to succeed in competition with the government. If it is not, there is no reason why the government should be engaged in it. The only way to find out is to leave other people free to enter."[21] In recent years, Friedman devoted much of his effort to promoting school vouchers that can be used to pay for tuition at both private and public schools, saying, "What is needed in America is a voucher of substantial size available to all students, and free of excessive regulations." His idea was that vouchers would allow private schools to compete with the public school monopoly.

Friedman made headlines by proposing a negative income tax to replace the existing welfare system and then opposing the bill to implement it because it merely supplemented the existing system rather than replace it. In 2005, Friedman and more than 500 other economists called for discussions regarding the economic benefits of the legalization of marijuana.[22]

Michael Walker of the Fraser Institute and Friedman hosted a series of conferences from 1986 to 1994. The goal was to create a clear definition of Economic freedom and a method for measuring it. Eventually this resulted in the first report on worldwide economic freedom, Economic Freedom in the World. These annual report has since provided data for numerous peer-reviewed studies and has influenced policy in several nations.

Along with sixteen other distinguished economists he opposed the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act and filled an amicus brief in Eldred v. Ashcroft.[2]

[edit] Other honors, recognition, and influence

Friedman allowed the Cato Institute to use his name for its Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty in 2001. The award is given out biannually. The Friedman Prize went to the late British economist Peter Bauer in 2002, Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto in 2004 and Mart Laar, former Estonian Prime Minister in 2006.

His wife Rose, sister of Aaron Director, with whom he founded the Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation for School Choice, served in the international selection committee. Friedman's son, David D. Friedman, has carried on his tradition of arguing in favor of free markets, but to a further extreme, advocating anarcho-capitalism.

At a ceremony celebrating Friedman's achievements, Alan Greenspan said "There are many Nobel Prize winners in economics, but few have achieved the mythical status of Milton Friedman."[23]

According to Harry Girvetz and Kenneth Minogue, Friedman was co-responsible with Friedrich von Hayek for providing the intellectual foundations for the revival of classical liberalism in the 20th century.[24]

29 January 2007 has been declared Milton Friedman Day by Arnold Schwarzenegger, Governor of California, to honor his life, works, and achievements, as well as his influence on modern economic and governmental policy.[25]

[edit] China

Milton Friedman delivered a speech entitled "The Chinese Economic Reform" in 1988 to Chinese students and scholars in the San Francisco Bay Area. The taped speech was hand-delivered to Zhu Rongji, the architect of the Chinese Economic Reform.

[edit] Hong Kong

Friedman once said "if you want to see capitalism in action, go to Hong Kong". He believed the Hong Kong economy is the best example of a laissez-faire capitalism economy.

One month before his death, he wrote the article "Hong Kong Wrong - What would Cowperthwaite say?" in the Wall Street Journal, criticizing Donald Tsang, Chief Executive of Hong Kong, for abandoning "positive noninterventionism".[26] Tsang later said he was merely changing the slogan to "big market, small government", where small government is defined as less than 20% of GDP. In a debate between Tsang and Alan Leong, rival for the position of Chief Executive, Leong brought up the topic and accused Tsang of angering Friedman to death.

Just before he died, he criticized Hong Kong's kindergarten voucher system as "not properly structured".

[edit] Chile

For more information on Milton Friedman's views on Chile, see Miracle of Chile.

Friedman's economic ideas were implemented in Chile under the military government of General Augusto Pinochet. It had never happened before (or since) that an economic theory was implemented so rigorously, which gave economics a unique opportunity for scientific research because it can normally not experiment and thus verify or falsify its theories.

Friedman visited Chile in 1975 during Pinochet's rule. Invited by a private foundation, he gave a series of lectures on economics. Several professors from the University of Chicago became advisors[citation needed] to the Chilean government and several Ph.D. graduates from the same university – known as "the Chicago boys" – served in Chilean ministries. Friedman met with Pinochet during his visit to Chile, but he did not serve as a formal advisor to the Chilean government or maintain personal contact with Pinochet. He was, however, willing to advise Pinochet after Pinochet overthrew the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende, and was widely criticized for doing so.[27]He had given a lecture advocating monetarist economics to the Catholic University of Chile. Friedman said that the "the emphasis of that talk was that free markets would undermine political centralization and political control."[28]

Friedman did not criticize Pinochet's dictatorship at the time, nor the assassinations, illegal imprisonments, torture, or other atrocities that were well-known by then,[29]although later, in Free to Choose he said the following: "Chile is not a politically free system and I do not condone the political system...the conditions of the people in the past few years has been getting better and not worse. They would be still better to get rid of the junta and to be able to have a free democratic system."[30] When he went to receive his Nobel prize in Stockholm, he was met by demonstrations.[31] In an interview on the PBS program Commanding Heights in 2000, Friedman attributed these demonstrations to communists seeking to discredit anyone with only the slightest connection to Pinochet--such as himself--by opponents he recognized from earlier occasions, adding that "there was no doubt that there was a concerted effort to tar and feather me."[32]

Friedman defended his role in Chile on the grounds that the move towards open market policies not only improved the economic situation in Chile but also contributed to the softening of Pinochet's rule and to the eventual constitutional transition to a democratic government in 1990. He also stressed that the lectures he gave in Chile were the same lectures he later gave in China and other socialist states.[33] In the 2000 PBS documentary The Commanding Heights, Friedman also noted that this criticism was misdirected and missed his main point. Friedman advocated that freer markets led to free people, and that Chile had an unfree economy which led to the military government, which then implemented open economy policies. These policies led to the end of military rule and a "free society".[34]

[edit] Iceland

Friedman visited Iceland in the autumn of 1984, met with prominent Icelanders and gave a lecture at the University of Iceland on the Tyranny of the Status Quo. He participated in a lively television debate August 31st with leading socialist intellectuals, including President Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson. When they complained that a fee was charged for attending his lecture at the University and that hitherto lectures by visiting scholars had been free-of-charge, Friedman replied that of course previous lectures had not been free-of-charge in a meaningful sense: There were always costs attached to lectures. What mattered was whether those who attended the lecture, were charged, or those who did not attend. He himself thought that it was fairer that only those who attended, paid. When Friedman was introduced, at a luncheon, to a governor of Iceland’s Central Bank with the words, that this person would become unemployed if Friedman’s theories were implemented in Iceland, Friedman immediately responded: "No, you would not become unemployed. You would only have to move to a more beneficial kind of employment."

Friedman made a great impact on a group of young intellectuals in the Independence Party, including Davíð Oddsson who became Prime Minister in 1991 and began a radical programme of monetary and fiscal stabilisation, ambitious privatisation, reduction of taxes (e.g. the corporate incomes tax from 45% to 18%), the definition of exclusive use rights in the fisheries, abolition of various government funds for aiding loss-making enterprises and liberalisation of currency transfers and capital markets. In 1975, Iceland had the 53rd freest economy in the world, whereas in 2004, it had the 9th freest economy, according to the Economic Freedom Index designed by Canada’s Fraser Institute. According to the index designed by the Heritage Foundation, Iceland has the 5th freest economy in the world. Davíð Oddsson was Prime Minister for thirteen and a half years, to 2004. Geir H. Haarde who followed him as leader of the Independence Party and who is at present Prime Minister, follows the same policies.[35]

[edit] Estonia

Although Friedman never visited Estonia, his book Free to Choose exercised a great influence on the then 32-year-old prime minister of Estonia Mart Laar, who has claimed that it was the only book on economics he had read before taking office. Laar's reforms are often credited with responsibility for transforming Estonia from an impoverished Soviet Republic to the "Baltic Tiger." A prime element of Laar's program was introduction of the flat tax. Laar won the 2006 Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty, awarded by the Cato Institute.

As a result of Laar's adherence to the principles in Free to Choose, Estonia now consistently ranks highly in the Heritage Foundation/Wall Street Journal Economic Freedom Index.

[edit] Works

[edit] Videos

[edit] Books and articles for general audiences

  • Roofs or Ceilings?: The Current Housing Problem with George J. Stigler. (Foundation for Economic Education, 1946), 22 pp. attacks rent control
  • Capitalism and Freedom ISBN 0-226-26401-7 (1962)
  • Social Security: Universal or Selective? with Wilbur J. Cohen (1972)
  • There's No Such Thing as a Free Lunch (1975), columns from Newsweek magazine online version
  • Free to Choose: A personal statement, with Rose Friedman, (1980)
  • "The Case for Overhauling the Federal Reserve, 1985, Challenge magazine article
  • The Essence of Friedman, essays edited by Kurt R. Leube, (1987) (ISBN 0-8179-8662-6)
  • Economic Freedom, Human Freedom, Political Freedom ISBN 1-883969-00-X (1992), short pamphlet
  • "The Drug War as a Socialist Enterprise," in Arnold S. Trebach, ed. Friedman and Szasz on Liberty and Drugs: Essays on the Free Market and Prohibition (Drug Policy Foundation Press: 1992)
  • Two Lucky People: Memoirs (with Rose Friedman) ISBN 0-226-26414-9 (1998)
  • George Stigler: A Personal Reminiscence, Journal of Political Economy Vol. 101, No. 5 (Oct., 1993), pp. 768-773 JSTOR
  • George J. Stigler, 1911-1991: Biographical Memoir, (National Academy of Sciences: 1998), online
  • Money Mischief: Episodes in Monetary History (1994) ISBN 0-15-162042-3, 28 6pp.
  • "The Case for Free Trade" with Rose Friedman, 1997, Hoover Digest magazine article
  • "Reflections on A Monetary History," The Cato Journal, Vol. 23, 2004, essay
  • J. Daniel Hammond and Claire H. Hammond, ed., Making Chicago Price Theory: Friedman-Stigler Correspondence, 1945-1957. Routledge, 2006. 165 pp. ISBN 0-415-70078-7.
  • "Why Money Matters," Wall Street Journal, Nov. 17, 2006, p. A20 (last words, with lovely NBER-type figure)

[edit] Scientific books and articles

  • "Professor Pigou's Method for Measuring Elasticities of Demand From Budgetary Data" The Quarterly Journal of Economics Vol. 50, No. 1 (Nov., 1935), pp. 151-163 JSTOR
  • "Marginal Utility of Money and Elasticities of Demand," The Quarterly Journal of Economics Vol. 50, No. 3 (May, 1936), pp. 532-533 JSTOR
  • "The Use of Ranks to Avoid the Assumption of Normality Implicit in the Analysis of Variance," Journal of the American Statistical Association Vol. 32, No. 200 (Dec., 1937), pp. 675-701 JSTOR
  • "The Inflationary Gap: II. Discussion of the Inflationary Gap," American Economic Review Vol. 32, No. 2, Part 1 (Jun., 1942), pp. 314-320 JSTOR
  • "The Spendings Tax as a Wartime Fiscal Measure," American Economic Review Vol. 33, No. 1, Part 1 (Mar., 1943), pp. 50-62 JSTOR
  • Taxing to Prevent Inflation: Techniques for Estimating Revenue Requirements (Columbia U.P. 1943, 236pp) with Carl Shoup and Ruth P. Mack
  • Income from Independent Professional Practice with Simon Kuznets (1945), Friedman's PhD thesis
  • "Lange on Price Flexibility and Employment: A Methodological Criticism," American Economic Review Vol. 36, No. 4 (Sep., 1946), pp. 613-631 JSTOR
  • "Utility Analysis of Choices Involving Risk" with Leonard Savage, 1948, Journal of Political Economy Vol. 56, No. 4 (Aug., 1948), pp. 279-304 JSTOR
  • "A Monetary and Fiscal Framework for Economic Stability", 1948, American Economic Review, Vol. 38, No. 3 (Jun., 1948), pp. 245-264 JSTOR
  • "A Fiscal and Monetary Framework for Economic Stability," Econometrica Vol. 17, Supplement: Report of the Washington Meeting (Jul., 1949), pp. 330-332 JSTOR
  • "The Marshallian Demand Curve," The Journal of Political Economy Vol. 57, No. 6 (Dec., 1949), pp. 463-495 JSTOR
  • "Wesley C. Mitchell as an Economic Theorist," The Journal of Political Economy Vol. 58, No. 6 (Dec., 1950), pp. 465-493 JSTOR
  • "Some Comments on the Significance of Labor Unions for Economic Policy", 1951, in D. McC. Wright, editor, The Impact of the Union.
  • "Commodity-Reserve Currency," Journal of Political Economy Vol. 59, No. 3 (Jun., 1951), pp. 203-232 JSTOR
  • "Price, Income, and Monetary Changes in Three Wartime Periods," American Economic Review Vol. 42, No. 2, Papers and Proceedings of the Sixty-fourth Annual Meeting of the American Economic Association (May, 1952), pp. 612-625 JSTOR
  • "The Expected-Utility Hypothesis and the Measurability of Utility", with Leonard Savage, 1952, Journal of Political Economy Vol. 60, No. 6 (Dec., 1952), pp. 463-474 JSTOR
  • The Methodology of Positive Economics (1953)
  • Essays in Positive Economics (1953)
  • "Choice, Chance, and the Personal Distribution of Income," Journal of Political Economy Vol. 61, No. 4 (Aug., 1953), pp. 277-290 JSTOR
  • "The Quantity Theory of Money: A restatement", 1956, in Friedman, editor, Studies in Quantity Theory.
  • A Theory of the Consumption Function (1957)
  • "A Statistical Illusion in Judging Keynesian Models" with Gary S. Becker, Journal of Political Economy Vol. 65, No. 1 (Feb., 1957), pp. 64-75 JSTOR
  • "The Supply of Money and Changes in Prices and Output", 1958, in Relationship of Prices to Economic Stability and Growth.
  • "The Demand for Money: Some Theoretical and Empirical Results," Journal of Political Economy Vol. 67, No. 4 (Aug., 1959), pp. 327-351 JSTOR
  • A Program for Monetary Stability (Fordham University Press, 1960) 110 pp online version
  • "Monetary Data and National Income Estimates," Economic Development and Cultural Change Vol. 9, No. 3, (Apr., 1961), pp. 267-286 JSTOR
  • "The Lag in Effect of Monetary Policy," Journal of Political EconomyVol. 69, No. 5 (Oct., 1961), pp. 447-466 JSTOR
  • Price Theory ISBN 0-202-06074-8 (1962), college textbook online version
  • "The Interpolation of Time Series by Related Series," Journal of the American Statistical Association Vol. 57, No. 300 (Dec., 1962), pp. 729-757 JSTOR
  • "Should There be an Independent Monetary Authority?", in L.B. Yeager, editor, In Search of a Monetary Constitution
  • Inflation: Causes and consequences, 1963.
  • "Money and Business Cycles," The Review of Economics and Statistics Vol. 45, No. 1, Part 2, Supplement (Feb., 1963), pp. 32-64 JSTOR
  • A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960, with Anna J. Schwartz, 1963; part 3 reprinted as The Great Contraction
  • "Money and Business Cycles" with A. J. Schwartz, 1963, Review of Economics & Statistics.
  • "The Relative Stability of Monetary Velocity and the Investment Multiplier in the United States, 1898-1958", with D. Meiselman, 1963, in Stabilization Policies.
  • "A Reply to Donald Hester", with D. Meiselman, 1964
  • "Reply to Ando and Modigliani and to DePrano and Mayer," with David Meiselman. American Economic Review Vol. 55, No. 4 (Sep., 1965), pp. 753-785 JSTOR
  • "Interest Rates and the Demand for Money," Journal of Law and Economics Vol. 9 (Oct., 1966), pp. 71-85 JSTOR
  • The Balance of Payments: Free Versus Fixed Exchange Rates with Robert V. Roosa (1967)]
  • "The Monetary Theory and Policy of Henry Simons," Journal of Law and Economics Vol. 10 (Oct., 1967), pp. 1-13 JSTOR
  • "What Price Guideposts?", in G.P. Schultz, R.Z. Aliber, editors, Guidelines
  • "The Role of Monetary Policy." American Economic Review, Vol. 58, No. 1 (Mar., 1968), pp. 1-17 JSTOR presidential address to American Economics Association
  • "Money: the Quantity Theory", 1968, IESS
  • "The Definition of Money: Net Wealth and Neutrality as Criteria" with Anna J. Schwartz, Journal of Money, Credit and Banking Vol. 1, No. 1 (Feb., 1969), pp. 1-14 JSTOR
  • 'Monetary vs. Fiscal Policy with Walter W. Heller (1969)
  • "Comment on Tobin", 1970, Quarterly Journal of Economics
  • "Monetary Statistics of the United States: Sources, methods. with Anna J. Schwartz, 1970.
  • "A Theoretical Framework for Monetary Analysis," Journal of Political Economy Vol. 78, No. 2 (Mar., 1970), pp. 193-238 JSTOR
  • The Counter-Revolution in Monetary Theory 1970.
  • "A Monetary Theory of National Income", 1971, Journal of Political Economy
  • "Government Revenue from Inflation," Journal of Political Economy Vol. 79, No. 4 (Jul., 1971), pp. 846-856 JSTOR
  • "Have Monetary Policies Failed?" American Economic Review Vol. 62, No. 1/2 (1972), pp. 11-18 JSTOR
  • "Comments on the Critics," Journal of Political Economy Vol. 80, No. 5 (Sep., 1972), pp. 906-950 JSTOR
  • "Comments on the Critics", 1974, in Gordon, ed. Milton Friedman and his Critics.
  • "Monetary Correction: A proposal for escalation clauses to reduce the cost of ending inflation", 1974
  • The Optimum Quantity of Money: And Other Essays (1976) online version
  • Milton Friedman in Australia, 1975 (1975)
  • Milton Friedman's Monetary Framework: A Debate with His Critics (1975)
  • "Comments on Tobin and Buiter", 1976, in J. Stein, editor, Monetarism.
  • "Inflation and Unemployment: Nobel lecture", 1977, Journal of Political Economy. Vol. 85, pp. 451-72. JSTOR
  • "Interrelations between the United States and the United Kingdom, 1873-1975.", with A.J. Schwartz, 1982, J Int Money and Finance
  • Monetary Trends in the United States and the United Kingdom: Their relations to income, prices and interest rates, 1876-1975. with Anna J. Schwartz, 1982
  • "Monetary Policy: Theory and Practice," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking Vol. 14, No. 1 (Feb., 1982), pp. 98-118 JSTOR
  • "Monetary Policy: Tactics versus strategy", 1984, in Moore, editor, To Promote Prosperity.
  • “Lessons from the 1979-1982 Monetary Policy Experiment, ” Papers and Proceedings, American Economic Association. pp. 397-401. (1984).
  • "Has Government Any Role in Money?" with Anna J. Schwartz, 1986, JME
  • "Quantity Theory of Money", in J. Eatwell, M. Milgate, P. Newman, eds., The New Palgrave (1998)
  • "Money and the Stock Market," Journal of Political Economy Vol. 96, No. 2 (Apr., 1988), pp. 221-245 JSTOR
  • "Bimetallism Revisited," Journal of Economic Perspectives Vol. 4, No. 4 (Autumn, 1990), pp. 85-104 JSTOR
  • "The Crime of 1873," Journal of Political Economy Vol. 98, No. 6 (Dec., 1990), pp. 1159-1194 JSTOR
  • "Franklin D. Roosevelt, Silver, and China," Journal of Political Economy Vol. 100, No. 1 (Feb., 1992), pp. 62-83 JSTOR

[edit] About Friedman

  • Chao, Hsiang-ke. "Milton Friedman and the Emergence of the Permanent Income Hypothesis" History of Political Economy 2003 35(1): 77-104. ISSN 0018-2702 Fulltext in Project Muse
  • A.W. Bob Coats; "The Legacy of Milton Friedman as Teacher" Economic Record, Vol. 77, 2001
  • Doherty, Brian. Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement (2007)
  • Frazer, William. Power and Ideas: Milton Friedman and the Big U-Turn. Vol. 1: The Background. Vol. 2: The U-Turn. Gainesville, Fla.: Gulf/Atlantic, 1988. 867 pp.
  • Hammond, J. Daniel. "Remembering Economics" Journal of the History of Economic Thought 2003 25(2): 133-143. ISSN 1042-7716; focus is on Friedman
  • Hirsch, Abraham, and Neil de Marchi. Milton Friedman: Economics in Theory and Practice (1990) his methodology
  • Jordan, Jerry L., Allan H. Meltzer, Thomas J. Sargent and Anna J. Schwartz; "Milton, Money, and Mischief: Symposium and Articles in Honor of Milton Friedman's 80th Birthday" Economic Inquiry. Volume: 31. Issue: 2. 1993. pp 197+. in JSTOR
  • Kasper, Sherryl. The Revival of Laissez-Faire in American Macroeconomic Theory: A Case Study of Its Pioneers (2002)
  • Krugman, Paul. "Who Was Milton Friedman?" New York Review of Books Vol 54#2 Feb. 15, 2007 online version
  • Leeson, Robert, ed. Ideology and International Economy: The Decline and Fall of Bretton Woods (2003)
  • Powell, Jim. The Triumph of Liberty (New York: Free Press, 2000). See profile of Friedman in the chapter "Inflation and Depression."
  • Rayack; Elton. Not So Free to Choose: The Political Economy of Milton Friedman and Ronald Reagan Praeger, 1987; attacks Friedman's policies from the left online version
  • Steindl, Frank G. "Friedman and Money in the 1930s" History of Political Economy 2004 36(3): 521-531. ISSN 0018-2702 lecture notes from his 1940 course show he did not criticize the Fed at that time, and did not emphasize money.
  • Tavlas, George S. "Retrospectives: Was the Monetarist Tradition Invented?" Journal of Economic Perspectives 1998 12(4): 211-222. ISSN 0895-3309 Fulltext in JSTOR
  • Stigler, George Joseph. Memoirs of an Unregulated Economist (1988)
  • Wahid, Abu N. M. ed; Frontiers of Economics: Nobel Laureates of the Twentieth Century. Greenwood Press. 2002 pp 109-15.
  • Walters, Alan (1987), “Friedman, Milton," New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economics, v. 2, 422-26

[edit] See also

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:

[edit] References

  1. ^ Nobel Laureates for 1976 at http://www.nobelprize.org, accessed 20 November 2006.
  2. ^ Milton Friedman, a giant among economists from The Economist.
  3. ^ The Power of Choice from Free to Choose Media.
  4. ^ Holcomb B. Noble, "Milton Friedman, a Leading Economist, Dies at 94, New York Times" November 16, 2006, obituary.
  5. ^ Washington Times. Thursday, November 16, 2006. Milton Friedman, tireless promoter of free markets, dies. Patrica Sullivan and Carlos Lozada
  6. ^ Hermann, Péter ed. Biográf Ki kicsoda 2004. Budapest, Hungary, 2003
  7. ^ Parker 2002, Friedman, Two Lucky People (1998) p. 59.
  8. ^ DeLong, J. Bradford (2007). Right from the Start? What Milton Friedman can teach progressives. Palgrave, MacMillan. p. 110 [1]
  9. ^ Friedman, Two Lucky People, 42, 84-85.
  10. ^ National Taxpayers Union
  11. ^ Friedman, Two Lucky People, p 113
  12. ^ Friedman, Milton. Interview with John Hawkins. Right Wing News.
  13. ^ Milton Friedman: An enduring legacy, The Economist, November 17, 2006, retrieved November 20, 2006; Patricia Sullivan and Carlos Lozada Economist Touted Laissez-Faire Policy, The Washington Post, November 17, 2006, retrieved November 20, 2006
  14. ^ "Free market economist Milton Friedman dead at 94." Christie, Jim. Reuters. November 16, 2006.
  15. ^ "Milton Friedman’s legacy." Christie, Jim. Examiner.com. November 22, 2006.
  16. ^ (Two Lucky People, p 233)
  17. ^ Stigler, p 34
  18. ^ Interview on Charlie Rose Show 11/17/06, originally broadcast 12/26/05.
  19. ^ http://www.reason.com/news/show/29691.html
  20. ^ Friedman and Freedom, Interview with Peter Jaworski. The Journal, Queen's University, March 15, 2002 - Issue 37, Volume 129
  21. ^ Friedman, Milton & Rose D. Capitalism and Freedom, University of Chicago Press, 1982, p. 29
  22. ^ An open letter, via Prohibitioncosts.org
  23. ^ Formaini, Robert L. Milton Friedman—Economist as Public Intellectual. Economic Insights Volume 7, Number 2. Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. 2002.
  24. ^ Girvetz, Harry K. and Minogue Kenneth. Liberalism, Encyclopedia Britannica (online), p. 16, retrieved May 16,2006
  25. ^ "'Milton Friedman Day' marked" by James Hohmann, in The Stanford Daily (30 January 2007), accessed 30 January 2007.
  26. ^ "http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110009051" Dr. Milton Friedman, Wall Street Journal - Opinion Journal. October 6, 2006
  27. ^ Profile of Milton Friedman" PBS.org
  28. ^ Interview with Jeffery Sachs on the "Miracle of Chile" PBS.org
  29. ^ General Augusto Pinochet (The Independent): "visit to Santiago in March 1975 of their guru, Professor Milton Friedman. He approved of the dictatorship and chose not to criticise the assassinations, illegal imprisonments, torture, exile and other atrocities - all exhaustively chronicled by Amnesty International"
  30. ^ Free to Choose Vol. 5
  31. ^ Milton Friedman Influenced Latin America (Latin Business Chronicle):"And Friedman also received plenty of criticism for even advising Pinochet, including large demonstrations when he received the Nobel award in Stockholm."
  32. ^ Milton Friedman interview PBS.org
  33. ^ Friedman and Friedman, Two Lucky People:Memoirs, p.600-601
  34. ^ Milton Friedman interview PBS.org
  35. ^ Article on Icelandic economic miracle by H.H.Gissurarson in Wall Street Journal 2004.

[edit] External links

[edit] Interviews

[edit] Obituaries

[edit] Organizations

[edit] Lectures

[edit] Biographies

[edit] Articles

Nobel Prize in Economics: Laureates (1976-2000)
v • d • e

1976: Friedman | 1977: Ohlin, Meade | 1978: Simon | 1979: Schultz, Lewis | 1980: Klein | 1981: Tobin | 1982: Stigler | 1983: Debreu | 1984: Stone | 1985: Modigliani | 1986: Buchanan | 1987: Solow | 1988: Allais | 1989: Haavelmo | 1990: Markowitz, Miller, Sharpe | 1991: Coase | 1992: Becker | 1993: Fogel, North | 1994: Harsanyi, Nash, Selten | 1995: Lucas | 1996: Mirrlees, Vickrey | 1997: Merton, Scholes | 1998: Sen | 1999: Mundell | 2000: Heckman, McFadden
History of economics
v • d • e
Ancient | Scholasticism | Mercantilism | Physiocrats | Classical political economy | German historical school | English historical school | Socialism | Institutional economics | Neoclassical economics | Lausanne school | Austrian school | Stockholm school | Keynesian economics | Chicago school


Persondata
NAME Milton Friedman
ALTERNATIVE NAMES None
SHORT DESCRIPTION American economist, public intellectual, nobel laureate
DATE OF BIRTH 31 July 1912
PLACE OF BIRTH Brooklyn, New York City, New York, United States of America
DATE OF DEATH 16 November 2006
PLACE OF DEATH San Francisco, California, United States of America
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../m/i/l/Milton_Friedman_66cc.html"