Uploaded October 2019 | Updated September 2026, 52 minutes ago
Milton Friedman tends to be well-known for quite a few work/career-related contributions, anything from being the proverbial father of the monetarism thought current to one of the strongest supporters of capitalism (with many books, papers and political contributions under his belt).
His career can be considered more than prolific, with achievements which range from helping with policy aimed at combating stagflation to writing the best-selling non-fiction book of 1980 and even winning a Nobel Prize.
In an academic theory landscape dominated in a very pronounced manner by Keynesianism, Milton Friedman managed to successfully put forth an alternative to Keynesianism in the form of monetarism.
As the name suggests, monetarism revolves around the money dimension or, to put it differently, around effective monetary policy rather than overly-aggressive fiscal policy. Among other things, Milton Friedman even believed that the Great Depression of 1929 would have been a lot less dramatic if better monetary policy choices would have been made by the Federal Reserve.
In a nutshell, whether you agree with the politics behind his work or not, Milton Friedman most definitely deserves to be considered one of the top economic thinkers of the 20th century... at the very least :)
Milton Friedman tends to be well-known for quite a few work/career-related contributions, anything from being the proverbial father of the monetarism thought current to one of the strongest supporters of capitalism (with many books, papers and political contributions under his belt).
His career can be considered more than prolific, with achievements which range from helping with policy aimed at combating stagflation to writing the best-selling non-fiction book of 1980 and even winning a Nobel Prize.
In an academic theory landscape dominated in a very pronounced manner by Keynesianism, Milton Friedman managed to successfully put forth an alternative to Keynesianism in the form of monetarism.
As the name suggests, monetarism revolves around the money dimension or, to put it differently, around effective monetary policy rather than overly-aggressive fiscal policy. Among other things, Milton Friedman even believed that the Great Depression of 1929 would have been a lot less dramatic if better monetary policy choices would have been made by the Federal Reserve.
In a nutshell, whether you agree with the politics behind his work or not, Milton Friedman most definitely deserves to be considered one of the top economic thinkers of the 20th century... at the very least :)
