Milton Friedman - Works

Milton Friedman's best known work is on the Quantity Theory of Money. He extended this Classical piece of analysis, tested it and put it into a more modern context. However, he also did quite a bit of work on the theory of distribution and argued for a new way of looking at the way people decide on their consumption - the permanent-income hypothesis.

His main published works include:

• Taxing to prevent inflation (1943)
• Essays in positive economics (1953)
• A theory of the consumption function (1957)
• A monetary history of the United States 1867-1960 (1963)
• The optimum quantity of money (1969)
• Free to choose: a personal statement (1980)

The monetary history of the United States was co-written with Anna Schwartz and was an important work, arguing that governments must bear responsibility for most of the fluctuations in prices, output and employment as they were rooted in monetary fluctuations.

It was in his work Studies in the Quantity Theory of Money (1956) that he developed his best known thesis. This is summed up in the quote:

"Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon"

Biography | Work | Theories