Biography of Milton Friedman

His parents traded haberdashery goods, while his father, as Friedman later recalled, "unsuccessfully tried to achieve a result in hopeless trade operations." At the summer, he was adopted by competitive selection at the University of Ratger with the right to receive a partial scholarship. In the year, he was awarded the degree of bachelor at once in two disciplines - economics and mathematics.

During his studies at the university, he fell under the influence of two economists: A. Jones, a future specialist in the field of interest theory. It is Jones Friedman who owes the writing of the thesis on the economy and obtaining a recommendation to continue specialization in this area at the University of Chicago. In the year, Friedman, having received the master's degree of economics at the University of Chicago, moved for graduate school at Columbia University in New York, where he studied statistics under the leadership of G.

at the end of the year, he returned to the Chicago University, becoming an assistant-researchist at the next summer he took part in a large-scale project for researching the consumer budget for the consumer budget National Committee on Natural Resources in Washington. Friedman's cooperation with the US National Bureau of Economic Research began in the year when he began to work as an assistant to economist S.

in the year, the Writing of the joint scientific work “Income From INDEPENDENT PROCTICES” was completed, this work later formed the dissertation, for which Fridman in the year was formed by Friedman in the year He was awarded the degree of Doctor in Economics at Columbia University. At the same time, some conclusions of this study caused significant objections among representatives of the National Bureau of Economic Research, so its publication was detained for several years.

The formation of M. Friedman as an influential scientist-economist has been traced since the years. During the Second World War, he participates in the development of tax policy on the instructions of the US Department of Finance in Washington, and also conducts research at the Columbia University of Military Statistics. In the years, he teaches the economy at the University of Minnesotsky, then he returns to the University of Chicago and becomes an assistant professor in economics.

In the early X, he worked in Paris as an economist as a “Marshall Plan”, developed by J. Marshall and provided for the restoration of the economies of Western Europe, destroyed by the Second World War. Friedman's knowledge in the field of theoretical and practical problems of the European economy increased during his stay at Cambridge University as an invited employee of the Fulbrait international educational program in the years.

Over the next three decades, Friedman was a professor at the University of Chicago, where he became one of the founders and the recognized leader of the economic school of the same name. At the same time, with the assistance of the US National Bureau of Economic Research, Friedman begins a long work on the creation of monetary economic theory, called Monetarism.

According to this concept, money plays a key role in the economic development of society, and quantitative changes in the money supply entail changes in other areas of economic activity. The justification of the concept of monetarism, which is methodologically based on mathematical analysis of equilibrium systems, is the “optimizing behavior” of rationally active economic agents that proceed from the uncertainty of benefits and costs and therefore strive to maximize usefulness and profit.

In this sense, economic regulation by the state is redundant and is of interest only to those who receive benefits from such regulation. If the state does not interfere in the regulation of the market, then in the long run the current prices will strive for competitive and reasonable costs. The central link in the concept of monetarism is the function of demand for money, on the basis of which a conclusion is made about the proportionality between the growth of the money supply and the change in the level of price in the economy.

Thus, only an indicator of the growth of the monetary mass in circulation needs regulation from the state. At the same time, Friedman recommends completely abandoning the consistent monetary policy, which still leads to cyclic fluctuations, and adhere to the tactics of constant increase in the money supply. These principles, according to Friedman and his like -minded people, are also applicable to international trade relations.Later, based on the results of his monetary research, Friedman becomes an active supporter of the idea of ​​floating currency courses and predicts that the international system of fixed currency courses, introduced within the framework of the Bretton Wood Agreement of the year, is not viable and will ultimately tolerate the failure, which occurred in the early half of the 10ths, Friedman formulated and proposed a new one The theory of the function of consumption, based on the relationship of constant income and consumption in the economy.

Keynes, connecting current consumption with current income, inevitably leads to an erroneous economic course. Instead, Friedman put forward a hypothesis according to which the consumer does not build his consumer calculations, with the exception of temporary, on the current income, but is relied mainly on the expected or predicted income. Exploring the vast array of practical data on consumption, he found that their results as a whole corresponded to this theory.

The conclusions of this study have played an important role in the subsequent development of Friedman quantitative theory of money. According to many economists, the significance of Friedman's theory about the relationship of income and consumption is difficult to overestimate. Most of the subsequent studies of the total consumption confirmed its concept, and the method of determining and evaluating income developed by him aroused a keen interest in economic circles and became the foundation for future research on macroeconomics.

In addition, the most important achievements in the economy metrics were achieved thanks to the statistical methods of Friedman, which he used to substantiate his theory. Schwartz allowed to highlight the relevance of the economic theory of Friedman not only in applied, but also in a historical context. The authors collected extensive statistical materials on cash circulation issues starting from the American Revolution period and documented the comprehensive influence of the money supply functioning in state circulation on the inflationary processes in the economy, while their joint work, dedicated to the era of great depression, contained criticism of the federal reserve system of the United States in the inability of the adequate level of liquidity systems during the crisis.

In the 10ths, Friedman was the main opponent of economic policy based on the teachings of J. Keynes, and supporters of Keynesianism, in turn, were his main opponents. So, in years, he is in collaboration with the economist D. Meiselmen published a number of software articles criticizing the main ideas of Keynes and his followers from the perspective of monetary economic theory.

The response of the views of Friedman and Maiselmen by Keynesians reflected the main directions of the debate of the X and X on Monetary Policy issues, during which, however, some of his proposals had to be quite acceptable and legitimate. In the years, the Friedman Monetary Doctrine was based on many government economies reforming, but in the future it was often criticized for the negative consequences of its application in some countries in particular, harsh economic reforms carried out in Chile in the second half of the 10ths after the military coup and came to the power of A.

Pinoche, as well as in Russia in early X after the collapse of the collapse The Soviet Union and the coming to power of B. Yeltsin, and received the collective name of "shock therapy." In the year, Friedman was awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics "For achievements in the field of consumption analysis, the history of monetary circulation and the development of monetary theory, as well as for the practical show of the complexity of the policy of economic stabilization." In the year, he left the University of Chicago, having spent 30 years in it, and moved to San Francisco, where he became a researcher at the Guver Institute at Stanford University.

In the year, Friedman was an unofficial adviser to R. Reagan during the election campaign, and then entered the Presidential Advisory Council on Economic Policy, where he worked for both presidential terms. In the year, he received the presidential medal of freedom, which the head of the state handed him. By this time, Friedman gained a reputation as one of the most influential economists of the 20th century, and his contribution to theoretical research and the practice of economic science has gained wide recognition.

During the X and until the end of his life, he continued to write editorial speakers and perform on television on economic issues. He passed away on November 16 in San Francisco at the age of 94. Friedman is a consistent supporter of both economic and political liberalism in his classical sense, which is based on the idea of ​​the individual’s freedom from all coercion.

In his books, articles, performances and comments, he constantly indicates the importance of state non -interference in public policy, rejecting the active participation of the state in the regulation of economic relations.Friedman believes that only in the conditions of a private property and free business system, rational forms of management and economic efficiency are achievable.

In his opinion, political freedom is impossible without economic freedom, and since the latter is based on a private entrepreneurial initiative and the mechanism of the competitive market, there is an inextricable relationship between capitalism and liberal democracy. His ideas about the relationship of economic and political freedoms, restricting the state’s intervention in the economy and public life, a flexible currency course and a flat income tax scale, the intensification of education and social security systems, the cancellation of a military call and the creation of a contract army, reducing the licensing of various goods and types of activities, and many others became the foundation for most of the liberal reforms, carried out in recent decorates in the last decades.

different countries of the world. Friedman's neoliberal views were widely known due to the weekly publications in the column of the influential journal Newsweek with the years, as well as his books: “Capitalism and Freedom” “Capitalism and Freedom”, Friedman, “Economic Freedom, Human Freedom, Political Freedom” “Economic” “Economic Freedom, Human Freedom, Political Freedom, a number of works by him have been created in cooperation with his wife for 68 years - economist Rose Friedman Rose Friedman; - In his scientific works, Friedman also acts as a methodologist of economic science, discussing, in particular, the role of models, idealization and mental experiments, the ratio of theory and empiria in economic knowledge.

Thus, in the article “Methodology of positive economic science” “The Methodology of Positive Economics”, which has become classical and entailing numerous discussions, it is distinguishing between positive and normative economic theories. The first does not fundamentally depend on any ethical position or normative judgments; Its task is to put forward hypotheses that give the correct and significant predictions of real economic facts and processes.

The criterion for the consistency of the conclusions of the hypothesis with reality allows us to judge its quality. In this sense, a positive economic theory can be as scientific as any theory in the natural sciences. Checking the "realism" of the hypothesis does not require direct verification of its premises. Rejecting epistemological realism, Friedman adheres to the instrumentalist interpretation of basic theoretical assumptions and models of theory: there is no need to substantiate their “realism” to justify the economic constructions out of them.

These prerequisites are selected for reasons of convenience, simplicity in the description of the model, intuitive credibility, and so on. Moreover, the most important of these prerequisites, for example, “perfect competition”, “perfect monopoly”, an economic agent as “a subject that is rationally maximizing the result of its activity”, and so on are very “unrealistic” in comparison with “imperfect” economic life.

However, their significance, according to Friedman, is determined not so much by the fact that they themselves serve or not realistic descriptions of reality, but by the fact that the theory built on their basis consistently explains many phenomena and more effectively predicts new facts than alternative theories. Based on such a methodology, Friedman defends the status of strict economic theory against various options for neoinstationalism, on the one hand, and methodological a priororism, on the other.

Milton Friedman: Capitalism and Freedom Milton Friedman: Inflation: Causes and Consequences, Milton Friedman, Anna J. Leube, Milton FriedMan: Quantity Theory of Money Becker, translations into Russian: M. Friedman: The relationship between economic and political freedoms. The mighty hand of the market. Freedom, equality and egalitarianism. Friedman: Analysis of usefulness when choosing among alternatives involving risk.

Friedman: Methodology of positive economic science. Issue 4. Friedman: quantitative theory of money. Friedman: If the money was spoke. Friedman: capitalism and freedom. Friedman, R. Friedman: Freedom of choice: Our position. Friedman, A. Schwartz: The history of the monetary system in the USA, -