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A highly influential economist and essayist, Milton Friedman is one of the most popularly known economists of the century. An ardent opponent of the Keynesian economics, Friedman led the "Monetarist" version of the Chicago School against the Keynesian orthodoxy in the 1960s and early 1970s - and particularly, against his arch-rival, James Tobin.

Friedman's early contributions include the "Permanent Income Hypothesis" in consumption and the "Positivist Methodology" in economics. His criticisms of Keynesian theory began with an attack on the IS-LM dichotomy with his "restatement" of the Quantity Theory in 1956 - reminding Keynesians that "money matters". This was followed up by a massive historical study with Anna J. Schwartz on the Monetary History of the United States (1963) - leading to a famous econometric debate on money-income causality. He then focused his attention upon the apparent breakdown of the Phillips Curve relationship in the 1970s, proposing to replace it with a "Natural Rate of Unemployment" (NRU) - a concept later formalized and superseded by Lucas's New Classicals.

Friedman concentrated much on policy, arguing that government discretionary "fine-tuning" of the economy, as had been argued by Keynesians, be replaced with iron "rules" of policy - notably his famous "3% money supply growth" rule. He also wrote several popular volumes advocating laissez-faire policies.

Friedman won the Nobel prize in 1976.

Information on Milton Friedman -

(1) Major Works of Milton Friedman

• "Utility Analysis of Choices Involving Risk" with Leonard Savage, 1948, JPE.
• "A Monetary and Fiscal Framework for Economic Stability", 1948, AER.
• "The Methodology of Positive Economics" in Friedman, 1953, below.
• Essays in Positive Economics, 1953.
• "The Quantity Theory of Money: A restatement", 1956, in Friedman, editor, Studies in Quantity Theory.
• A Theory of the Consumption Function, 1957.
• A Program for Monetary Stability, 1959.
• "The Lag in Effect of Monetary Policy", 1961, JPE
• Capitalism and Freedom, 1962.
• "Money and Business Cycles" with A.J. Schwartz, 1963, REStat.
• A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960, with Anna J. Schwartz, 1963.
• "The Role of Monetary Policy", 1968, AER
• "A Theoretical Framework for Monetary Analysis", 1970, JPE.
• "Comments on the Critics", 1974, in Gordon, Milton Friedman and his Critics.
• "Inflation and Unemployment: The Nobel Lecture", 1977, JPE.
• Free to Choose, with Rose Friedman, 1980.