Friedman, Milton

born July 31, 1912, Brooklyn, N.Y., U.S.

U.S. economist.

Friedman studied at Rutgers and Columbia before joining the faculty of the University of Chicago in 1946. There he became the leading U.S. advocate of monetarism. He oversaw the economic transition in Chile after the overthrow of Salvador Allende. In the 1980s his ideas were taken up by Pres. Ronald Reagan and Britain's Margaret Thatcher. His many books include A Theory of the Consumption Function (1957) and Capitalism and Freedom (1962), both with his wife, Rose Friedman, and A Monetary History of the United States, 1867–1960 (1963) and Monetary Trends of the United States and the United Kingdom (1981), with economist Anna Schwartz. He received the Nobel Prize in 1976.

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▪ 2007

      American economist and educator (b. July 31, 1912, Brooklyn, N.Y.—d. Nov. 16, 2006, San Francisco, Calif.), was one of the leading proponents of monetarism in the second half of the 20th century; he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1976. Friedman's public-policy positions included support of flexible exchange rates and a monetary growth rule, the promotion of school vouchers, a balanced-budget amendment, and the decriminalization of drugs; he opposed conscription and various forms of price controls from the minimum wage to rent controls. In the 1950s macroeconomics was dominated by the theories promoted by John Maynard Keynes. Friedman opposed the Keynesian orthodoxy that money does not matter, instead promoting the view that changes in the money supply affect real economic activity in the short run and the price level in the long run. He also questioned the validity of another key Keynesian construct, the Phillips curve, which asserted that a stable trade-off exists between the rate of inflation and the unemployment rate. Friedman argued that the trade-off was temporary and depended on workers' being fooled by unanticipated inflation into thinking that a rise in their nominal wage was a rise in their real wage, which would thus induce them to produce more output. While studying (B.A., 1932) at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, N.J., Friedman came under the influence of economics professor Arthur Burns, who introduced him to Alfred Marshall's Principles of Economics. Friedman continued his economics studies at the University of Chicago (A.M., 1933) and Columbia University, New York City (Ph.D., 1946). In 1935 he moved to Washington, D.C., to assist with a consumer budget study for the Natural Resources Committee. Two years later he took a job with the National Bureau of Economic Research in New York City to join Simon Kuznets in studies of income and wealth distribution. He later worked at the Department of the Treasury in the Division of Tax Research and the Statistical Research Group at Columbia University. At the University of Chicago, he taught economics (1946–83) and established the Money and Banking Workshop, which became renowned for the presentation and critical appraisal of papers in monetary economics. Friedman's most influential books included A Theory of the Consumption Function (1957) and A Monetary History of the United States, 1867–1960 (1963), the first of three books he would coauthor with Anna J. Schwartz. He also advised Presidents Richard M. Nixon and Ronald Reagan on economic policy and wrote a regular column (1966–84) for Newsweek magazine. Friedman and his wife, Rose, co-wrote Free to Choose, which led to a PBS television series and a set of educational videos, and the memoir Two Lucky People (1998).

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▪ American economist

born July 31, 1912, Brooklyn, New York, U.S.

died November 16, 2006, San Francisco, California

 American economist and educator, one of the leading proponents of monetarism in the second half of the 20th century. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1976.

      Friedman was one year old when his family moved from Brooklyn, New York, to Rahway, New Jersey, where he grew up. He won a scholarship to Rutgers University, studied mathematics and economics, and earned a bachelor's degree there in 1932. While at Rutgers he encountered Arthur Burns, then a new assistant professor of economics, whom Friedman ultimately regarded as his mentor and most important influence. Burns introduced him to many things, one of which was Alfred Marshall (Marshall, Alfred)'s Principles of Economics, and Friedman later would approvingly quote Marshall's description of economics as “an engine for the discovery of concrete truth.” Friedman always insisted that the study of economics was not merely a mathematical game and that it should enable one to understand how the real world works.

      Friedman continued his economics studies at the University of Chicago (A.M., 1933) and Columbia University (Ph.D., 1946). While at Chicago he took Jacob Viner (Viner, Jacob)'s price theory course and met his future wife, Rose Director. In 1935 he moved to Washington, D.C., to assist with a consumer budget study for the Natural Resources Committee. Two years later Friedman took a job with the National Bureau of Economic Research in New York City so that he could join Simon Kuznets (Kuznets, Simon) in studies of income and wealth distribution, in particular the distribution of professional incomes. His finding—that barriers to entry maintained by the American Medical Association helped explain the much higher incomes of physicians relative to other comparable professional groups—was the source of some controversy when it was finally published. In the early years of World War II, Friedman worked at the Department of Treasury in the Division of Tax Research and later for the Statistical Research Group at Columbia University, where he was a member of a team that applied statistical analysis to war research. He also taught for one year each at the Universities of Wisconsin and Minnesota. In 1946 he accepted a position in the economics department at the University of Chicago (Chicago, University of), which, except for occasional sabbaticals or visiting appointments, would be his academic home for the next 30 years. He became a full professor in 1948, was named the Paul Snowden Russell Distinguished Service Professor of Economics in 1962, and became an emeritus professor in 1983.

      At Chicago Friedman taught courses in price theory and monetary economics, and in 1953 he established the Money and Banking Workshop—an important forum for faculty members, graduate students working on dissertations in the field, and occasional outside visitors. The workshop became renowned for the presentation and critical appraisal of papers in monetary economics.

      In 1947 Friedman attended the opening meeting of the Mont Pèlerin Society, an organization founded by F.A. Hayek (Hayek, F.A.) and dedicated to the study and preservation of free societies. Friedman would later say that his participation at the meeting “marked the beginning of my active involvement in the political process.” His multifold involvement included advising Presidents Richard M. Nixon (Nixon, Richard M.) and Ronald W. Reagan (Reagan, Ronald W.) on economic policy, participating in various institutes and societies, and writing a regular column from 1966 to 1984 for Newsweek magazine, in which his articles would alternate with those presenting more liberal views on economic matters, by scholars such as Paul Samuelson (Samuelson, Paul) and Lester Thurow. Friedman's public policy positions included support of flexible exchange rates and a monetary growth rule, the promotion of school vouchers, a balanced budget amendment, and the decriminalization of drugs; he opposed conscription and various forms of price controls—from the minimum wage to rent controls.

      Friedman's contributions to economic theory are numerous. One of his earliest, described in A Theory of the Consumption Function (1957), was the articulation of the permanent income hypothesis, the idea that a household's consumption and savings decisions are more affected by changes in its permanent income than by income changes that household members perceive as temporary or transitory. The permanent income hypothesis provided an explanation for some puzzles that had emerged in the empirical data concerning the relationship between the average and marginal propensities to consume (propensity to consume). It also helped explain why, for example, activist fiscal policy in the form of a tax increase, if perceived as temporary, might not lead to the intended reductions in consumption; instead, the increased tax might be financed out of savings, leaving consumption levels unchanged. This was Friedman's novel finding: if households do not perceive permanent income as changing, they will maintain their established spending patterns.

      Friedman's best-known contributions are in the realm of monetary economics, where he is seen as the founder of monetarism and as one of the successors of the “Chicago school” tradition of economics. In the 1950s macroeconomics was dominated by scholars who adhered to theories promoted by John Maynard Keynes (Keynes, John Maynard). Keynesians (Keynesian economics) believed in using activist, government-sponsored policy to counteract the business cycle, and they held that fiscal policy was more effective than monetary policy in neutralizing, for example, the effects of a recession. Friedman opposed the Keynesian orthodoxy that “money does not matter,” instead promoting the view that changes in the money supply affect real economic activity in the short run and the price level in the long run. He stated his case in his introduction to Studies in the Quantity of Money (1956), a collection of articles that had been contributed by participants in the Money and Banking Workshop. This was followed by an empirical article, “The Relative Stability of Monetary Velocity and the Investment Multiplier in the United States, 1897–1958” (1963), coauthored with David Meiselman, in which the stability and importance of the Keynesian multiplier was questioned. The multiplier, forming a link between changes in autonomous expenditure and subsequent changes in national income, is a key element in the Keynesian case for effective and predictable fiscal policy.

      In 1963 Friedman published the first of three books he would coauthor with Anna J. Schwartz, A Monetary History of the United States, 1867–1960. Combining theoretical and empirical analysis with institutional insights, this volume provided an intricately detailed account of the role of money in the U.S. economy since the Civil War. Especially influential was the authors' claim that the Great Depression would have been a typical downturn had it not been for policy errors made by the Federal Reserve.

      In 1967 Friedman made another seminal contribution to Keynesian-monetarist debates in his presidential address before the American Economic Association. In it he questioned the validity of another key Keynesian construct, the Phillips curve, which asserted that a stable trade-off exists between the rate of inflation and the unemployment rate. Friedman argued that the trade-off was temporary and depended on workers being “fooled” by unanticipated inflation into thinking that a rise in their nominal wage was a rise in their real wage, thus inducing them to produce more output. According to Friedman, the only way to reduce unemployment below what he dubbed the “natural rate” required not a one-time increase but accelerating inflation. The “stagflation” of the 1970s (literally, a combination of economic stagnation and inflation), impossible in a simplified Keynesian framework, was seen by many as confirmation of Friedman's hypothesis. It was in any event the death knell for the dominance of the Keynesian model in macroeconomics.

      In 1976, the year he retired from the University of Chicago, Friedman was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics. In 1977 he became a member of the Hoover Institution in Palo Alto, California. About the same time he began work with his wife, Rose, on Free to Choose, a book extolling the virtues of a free market system that eventually led to a Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) television series and a set of educational videos of the same name. In 1998 the Friedmans published their memoirs, Two Lucky People.

      Over the course of his career, Friedman made a number of enduring contributions to the field of economics. He became an articulate spokesman for free markets and free societies in an era when many social scientists disparaged market solutions to social problems. Friedman's collaborative work with Anna J. Schwartz has remained a vital resource for those interested in the monetary history of the United States. Other legacies include Friedman's revival of a monetary approach to macroeconomics and his persistent critique of the Keynesian orthodoxy of his day.

Bruce J. Caldwell

Additional Reading

The best source of information on Friedman's life is the autobiographical Milton Friedman and Rose D. Friedman, Two Lucky People: Memoirs (1998). Friedman's work on variations in professional incomes is contained in Milton Friedman and Simon Kuznets, Income from Independent Professional Practice (1945, reissued 1954). He develops the permanent income hypothesis in Milton Friedman, A Theory of the Consumption Function (1957). His initial work with David Meiselman on the relative stability of monetary velocity versus the Keynesian multiplier is contained in Milton Friedman and David Meiselman, “The Relative Stability of Monetary Velocity and the Investment Multiplier in the United States, 1897–1958,” in E. Cary Brown et al., Stabilization Policies (1963), pp. 165–268.Friedman's presidential address before the American Economic Association is Milton Friedman, “The Role of Monetary Policy,” The American Economic Review, 58(1):1–17 (March 1968). His development of monetarism is outlined in Milton Friedman, “A Theoretical Framework for Monetary Analysis,” in Robert J. Gordon (ed.), Milton Friedman's Monetary Framework: A Debate with His Critics (1974), pp. 1–62; while a contemporaneous account of monetarism appears in Thomas Mayer, The Structure of Monetarism (1978). In addition to Friedman and Schwartz's Monetary History (1963) cited in this article, see Milton Friedman and Anna Jacobson Schwartz, Monetary Statistics of the United States: Estimates, Sources, Methods (1970), and Monetary Trends in the United States and the United Kingdom, Their Relation to Income, Prices, and Interest Rates, 1867–1975 (1982). Friedman's contributions to the analysis of choice under risk are contained in Milton Friedman and L.J. Savage, “The Utility Analysis of Choices Involving Risk,” The Journal of Political Economy, 56(4):279–304 (August 1948), and “The Expected Utility Hypothesis and the Measurability of Utility,” The Journal of Political Economy, 60(6):463–474 (December 1952). Friedman's main contribution to the methodology of economics—that the realism of a theory's assumptions are less important than its ability to predict—may be found in Milton Friedman, Essays in Positive Economics (1953, reissued 2000). His approach to economics is examined in J. Daniel Hammond, Theory and Measurement: Causality Issues in Milton Friedman's Monetary Economics (1996); and Abraham Hirsch and Neil de Marchi, Milton Friedman: Economics in Theory and Practice (1990). Friedman's policy views may be found in Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom (1962, reissued 1982).Bruce J. Caldwell

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