Examples of Work by Milton Friedman

Milton Friedman

Milton Friedman (31 July 1912 – 16 November 2006) was an American economist. He was born in New York. In 1976 he won the Nobel Prize in Economics. Friedman's work focuses on monetary theory, including books such as the Studies in the Quantity Theory of Money (1956) and A Monetary History of the United States (1963).

Articles

Why money matters?
A difference of kind
The father of modern school reform
Free to choose

Research Papers

Download: The island of stone money
Large stones quarried and shaped on a distant island were used as money on the Island of Yap. After Germany acquired the island at the turn of the century, its officials had difficulty inducing the residents to repair the footpaths until they resorted to the desperate expedient of taking possession of many of the stones by marking them with a cross in black paint, to be removed when the paths were repaired. The apparently meaningless measure had real results. That was equally true of an eerily similar event that occurred in 1.932 when the New York Federal Reserve Bank transferred gold to the Bank of France by earmarking gold in its vaults..

Download: The role of monetary policy
There is wide agreement about the major goals of economic policy: high employment, stable prices, and rapid growth. There is less agreement that these goals are mutually compatible or, among those who regard them as incompatible, about the terms at which they can and should be substituted for one another. There is least agreement about the role that various instruments of policy can and should play in achieving the several goals.

Download: Inflation and unemployment
When the Bank of Sweden established the prize for Economic Science in memory of Alfred Nobel (1968), there doubtless was - as there doubtless still remains - widespread skepticism among both scientists and the broader public about the appropriateness of treating economics as parallel to physics, chemistry, and medicine. These are regarded as 'exact sciences' in which objective, cumulative, definitive knowledge is possible. Economics, and its fellow social sciences, are regarded more nearly as branches of philosophy than of science properly defined, enmeshed with values at the outset because they deal with human behavior. Do not the social sciences, in which scholars are analyzing the behavior of themselves and their fellow men, who are in turn observing and reacting to what the scholars say, require fundamentally different methods of investigation than the physical and biological sciences? Should they not be judged by different criteria?

Videos

Milton Friedman - The free lunch myth
Milton Friedman - Greed
Milton Friedman - Why drugs should be legalized

Series

Milton Friedman - Capitalism and freedom

Podcast

Milton Friedman on money

His most recent publications includes :

Capitalism and freedom look inside : Capitalism and freedom
Free to choose: A personal statement look inside : Free to choose: A personal statement
Money mischief: Episodes in monetary history look inside : Money mischief: Episodes in monetary history