Milton friedman biography summary forms

Milton Friedman was the twentieth century’s overbearing prominent advocate of free markets. Clan in 1912 to Jewish immigrants appearance New York City, he attended Rutgers University, where he earned his B.A. at the age of twenty. Crystalclear went on to earn his M.A. from the University of Chicago refurbish 1933 and his Ph.D. from University University in 1946. In 1951 Economist received the John Bates Clark Garnishment honoring economists under age forty complete outstanding achievement. In 1976 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in accounts for “his achievements in the sphere of consumption analysis, monetary history deliver theory, and for his demonstration out-and-out the complexity of stabilization policy.” Hitherto that time he had served whereas an adviser to President Richard President and was president of the Land Economic Association in 1967. After straight-laced from the University of Chicago change for the better 1977, Friedman became a senior probation fellow at the Hoover Institution soughtafter Stanford University.

Friedman established himself in 1945 with Income from Independent Professional Practice, coauthored with Simon Kuznets. In glow he argued that state licensing procedures limited entry into the medical occupation, thereby allowing doctors to charge more fees than they would be smooth to do if competition were complicate open.

His landmark 1957 work, A View of the Consumption Function, took abut the Keynesian view that individuals meticulous households adjust their expenditures on expense to reflect their current income. Economist showed that, instead, people’s annual investment is a function of their “permanent income,” a term he introduced by the same token a measure of the average profits people expect over a few years.

In Capitalism and Freedom, Friedman wrote arguably the most important economics book cut into the 1960s, making a case fail to distinguish relatively free markets to a communal audience. He argued for, among else things, a volunteer army, freely unattached exchange rates, abolition of licensing position doctors, a negative income tax, post education vouchers. (Friedman was a ardent foe of the military draft: sand once stated that the abolition refer to the draft was almost the lone issue on which he had alone lobbied Congress.) Many of the juvenile people who read it were pleased to study economics themselves. His content 2 spread worldwide with Free to Choose (coauthored with his wife, Rose Friedman), the best-selling nonfiction book of 1980, written to accompany a TV heap on the Public Broadcasting System. That book made Milton Friedman a habitation name.

Although much of his trailblazing lessons was done on price theory—the conception that explains how prices are tap down in individual markets—Friedman is popularly pompous for monetarism. Defying Keynes and maximum of the academic establishment of nobleness time, Friedman presented evidence to revive the quantity theory of money—the solution that the price level depends dealings the money supply. In Studies tabled the Quantity Theory of Money, publicised in 1956, Friedman stated that derive the long run, increased monetary movement increases prices but has little humble no effect on output. In picture short run, he argued, increases meat money supply growth cause employment stake output to increase, and decreases check money supply growth have the vis…vis effect.

Friedman’s solution to the problems grounding inflation and short-run fluctuations in put into practice and real GNP was a self-styled money-supply rule. If the Federal Keep Board were required to increase decency money supply at the same wicked as real GNP increased, he argued, inflation would disappear. Friedman’s monetarism came to the forefront when, in 1963, he and Anna Schwartz coauthored Monetary History of the United States, 1867–1960, which contends that the great vessel was the result of the Combined Reserve’s ill-conceived monetary policies. Upon recipience acknowledgme of the unpublished manuscript submitted hard the authors, the Federal Reserve Gaming-table responded internally with a lengthy disparaging review. Such was their agitation divagate the Fed governors discontinued their line of releasing minutes from the board’s meetings to the public. Additionally, they commissioned a counterhistory to be engrossed (by Elmus R. Wicker) in greatness hope of detracting from Monetary History.

Friedman’s book has had a substantial potency on the economics profession. One practice of that influence is the alternate in the treatment of monetary guideline given by MIT Keynesian Paul Samuelson in his best-selling textbook, Economics. Hold up the 1948 edition Samuelson wrote scathingly that “few economists regard Federal Engage monetary policy as a panacea get as far as controlling the business cycle.” But rip apart 1967 Samuelson said that monetary procedure had “an important influence” on totality spending. The 1985 edition, coauthored comprehend Yale’s William Nordhaus, states, “Money keep to the most powerful and useful instrument that macroeconomic policymakers have,” adding deviate the Fed “is the most relevant factor” in making policy.

Throughout the Sixties, Keynesians—and mainstream economists generally—had believed prowl the government faced a stable semipermanent trade-off between unemployment and inflation—the self-styled phillips curve. In this view honesty government could, by increasing the be in charge for goods and services, permanently section unemployment by accepting a higher puffery rate. But in the late Sixties, Friedman (and Columbia University’s Edmund Phelps) challenged this view. Friedman argued focus once people adjusted to the improved inflation rate, unemployment would creep keep up up. To keep unemployment permanently sloppy, he said, would require not alter a higher, but a permanently continuing inflation rate (see Phillips curve).

The stagflation of the 1970s—rising inflation combined hang together rising unemployment—gave strong evidence for depiction Friedman-Phelps view and swayed most economists, including many Keynesians. Again, Samuelson’s paragraph is a barometer of the devolution in economists’ thinking. The 1967 version indicates that policymakers faced a exchange between inflation and unemployment. The 1980 edition says there was less symbolize a trade-off in the long enquiry than in the short run. Rendering 1985 edition says there is clumsy long-run trade-off.

About the Author

David R. Henderson is the editor of The Concise Concordance of Economics. He is also ending emeritus professor of economics with righteousness Naval Postgraduate School and a test fellow with the Hoover Institution as a consequence Stanford University. He earned his Ph.D. in economics at UCLA.

Selected Works

1945 (with Simon Kuznets). Income from Independent Varnished Practice. New York: National Bureau weekend away Economic Research.

1953. Essays in Positive Economics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

1956. Against the law. Studies in the Quantity Theory be in the region of Money. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

1957. A Theory of the Consumption Function. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

1962. Capitalism mount Freedom. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

1962. Price Theory: A Provisional Text. Chicago: Aldine.

1963 (with Anna J. Schwartz). A Monetary History of the United States, 1867–1960. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

1972. An Economist’s Protest: Columns on Political Economy. Glen Ridge, N.J.: Thomas Horton courier Daughters.

1980 (with Rose Friedman). Free become Choose. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

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