Milton Friedman was an American economist and scientist. He wrote more than 30 books and over 400 scientific publications on economics and economic policy, monetary theory, market regulation and so on. He was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1976.
Milton Friedman was born in New York on July 31, 1912 in a family of poor Jewish immigrants. In 1928 he entered Rutgers University, where he specialized in mathematics and economics. Arthur F. Burns and Homer Jones convinced him that modern economics could help end the Great Depression.
A chain of coincidences led Friedman to the University of Chicago. Here in 1933 he received his Master of Arts degree. At Chicago Friedman also met his future wife, economist Rose Director.
In his second year of graduate school, he undergone an internship with Harold Hotelling at Columbia University, where he received PhD in 1946.
Friedman's position among economists was so high that he was awarded The John Bates Clark Medal in 1951, one year before his 40th birthday.
One of his most outstanding works is “A Theory of the Consumption Function”, which gave a new look at Keynesian theory. In it, Friedman describes his concept of the consumption function, which argues that people are more likely to rely on long-term income, rather than current one.
“Capitalism and Freedom” demonstrated Friedman's ability in the genre of popular economics literature. Using simple language, he defended ideas such as “negative income tax”, a voluntary army, “floating rate of exchange” and “school vouchers.” He tried to prove that the market mechanism can solve most significant social problems.
Friedman's "Monetarism" gained credibility due to his publication “A Monetary History of the United States”, which contains the shocking statement that the Great Depression was a consequence of the inept monetary policy of the Federal Reserve System. After that, it was “A Program for Monetary Stability” represented on the American Economic Association, which introduced the famous concept of “natural rate of unemployment”. In this work, Friedman tried to explain the phenomenon of "stagflation", that is the simultaneous existence of unemployment and inflation. Stagflation is difficult to explain in terms of Keynesian theory, and Friedman jumped at it in an attempt to establish the failure of Keynesian economics.
In "А Theoretical Framework for Monetary Analysis" and "Nobel Lecture: Inflation and Unemployment", Friedman continued to develop these ideas, arguing that the new problem was not “stagflation,” but “slumpflation,” that is period of combined economic decline and rising inflation.
Friedman died on November 16, 2006 in San Francisco, the cause of death was heart failure. He was 94 years old. Friedman remained an active economist until his death: his last column in The Wall Street Journal came out the day after his death.
Selected bibliography
• A Theory of the Consumption Function (1957)
• A Program for Monetary Stability (Fordham University Press, 1960)
• Capitalism and Freedom (1962)
• A Monetary History of the United States, 1867–1960, with Anna J. Schwartz
• Free to Choose: A Personal Statement, with Rose Friedman, (1980)
• The Essence of Friedman, essays edited by Kurt R. Leube, (1987)
• Two Lucky People: Memoirs (with Rose Friedman)
References:
1. Blaug, Mark. Great economists since Keynes: an introduction to the lives & works of one hundred modern economists.
2. Burgin, Angus. The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free Markets since the Depression.
3. Ebenstein, Alan. Milton Friedman: A Biography.