Founder of monetarism, for whom "inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon"
Friedman was born in Brooklyn to Jewish working-class immigrants from the Kingdom of Hungary. From 1946 he taught for thirty years at the University of Chicago, where he was among the intellectual leaders of the Chicago school. In A Monetary History of the United States (1963), with Anna Schwartz, he blamed the Great Depression on a contraction of the money supply, and he founded monetarism, which called for a steady rule of money growth. He received the 1976 Nobel Memorial Prize. In 1975 he urged "shock treatment" on Pinochet in Chile; he advised Reagan, served on his Economic Policy Advisory Board and advised Thatcher. His television series Free to Choose (1980) carried his case for the free market to a mass audience.
Activities and affiliations
-
1941–1943
United States state institutionsTreasury adviser on wartime tax policy
Economy, finance and planning -
1946–1977
Scholarship and theory
-
1977–2006
Stanford UniversityFellow of the Hoover Institution
Scholarship and theory -
Republican Party (United States)
Scholarship and theory
Career Timeline
- 1946–1977Professor at the University of Chicago
- 1963A Monetary History of the United States (with Anna Schwartz)
- 1975.03Visited Chile and met Pinochet
- 1976Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences
- 1980Television series Free to Choose
- 1981–1989Member of President Reagan's Economic Policy Advisory Board