Milton Friedman
1912 – 2006 American economist, adviser
The free-market economist whose Chicago School shaped the reforms imposed in Pinochet's Chile.
- Religion
- Jewish (secular)
- Affiliations
- University of Chicago; the Chicago Boys
Milton Friedman was a Nobel-winning economist and leading advocate of free markets and monetarism at the University of Chicago. His students, the Chicago Boys, designed the market reforms carried out under Pinochet's dictatorship in Chile. Friedman's 1975 visit and advice to the regime drew lasting criticism, though he argued that free markets would eventually support political freedom.
Connections
- associate of Jack Welch — Welch became the emblem of Friedman's shareholder-value doctrine, though he later called maximizing shareholder value the dumbest idea in the world.
- rival of John Maynard Keynes — Friedman became the central monetarist challenger to Keynesian stabilization policy.
- rival of Louis Brandeis — Brandeis warned of the curse of bigness; Friedman later championed the shareholder-first corporation Brandeis feared.
In the timeline
- 1936 Publication of Keynes's General Theory mentioned
- 1946 Milton Friedman joins the University of Chicago economics department central figure
- 1947 Founding of the Mont Pelerin Society mentioned
- 1953 Friedman's "The Methodology of Positive Economics" mentioned
- 1962 Publication of Capitalism and Freedom mentioned
- 1963 Friedman and Schwartz's A Monetary History of the United States author
- 1975 Chile's economic shock therapy begins mentioned
- 1975 Friedman's visit to Chile and "The Fatal Conceit" controversy mentioned
- 1976 Friedman awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences laureate
- 2006 Milton Friedman's death central figure