Milton Friedman

"The free market is the only mechanism that has ever been discovered for achieving participatory democracy." Milton Friedman 

Biography

Milton Friedman, recipient of the 1976 Nobel Memorial Prize for economic science, is one of the most important intellectual figures contributing to the revival of classical liberal/libertarian thought after World War II.

A student of influential University of Chicago economist Frank Knight, Friedman is a leading figure in the Chicago School of monetary economics, which stesses the quantity of money as an instrument of government policy and as a determinant of business cycles. In addition to his position as a senior research fellow at the Hoover Institution, Friedman is the Paul Snowden Russell Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Chicago, where he taught from 1946 to 1976.

In addition to his scientific work, Friedman has also written extensively on public policy, always with a primary emphasis on the preservation and extension of individual freedom. His most important books in this field are (with Rose D. Friedman) Capitalism and Freedom (University of Chicago Press, 1962); Bright Promises, Dismal Performance (Thomas Horton and Daughters, 1983), which consists mostly of reprints of columns he wrote for Newsweek from 1966 to 1983; (with Rose D. Friedman) Free to Choose (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980), which complements a ten-part television series of the same name shown over the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) network in early 1980; and (with Rose D. Friedman) Tyranny of the Status Quo (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1984), which complements a three-part television series of the same name, shown over PBS in early 1984.

Resources by Milton Friedman

Capitalism and Freedom

Free to Choose