A Nobel Prize-winning economist and his wife argue that free-market forces work better than government controls for achieving real equality and security, protecting consumers and workers, providing education, and avoiding inflation and unemployment

This classic set of essays by Nobel Laureate and leading monetary theorist Milton Friedman presents a coherent view of the role of money, focusing on specific topics related to the empirical analysis of monetary phenomena and policy. The early chapters cover factors determining the real quantity of money held in a community and the welfare implications of policies that affect the quantity held. The following chapters formally restate why quantity analysis has become central to the science of economics. Friedman's presidential address to the American Economic Association, included here, provides a general summary of his views on the role of monetary policy, with an emphasis on its limitations and its possibilities. This theoretical framework is used in examining a number of empirical problems: the demand for money, the explanation of price changes in wartime periods, and the role of money in business cycles. These essays summarize some of the most important results of Friedman's extensive research over the course of his lifetime. The chapters on policy that follow survey the positions of earlier economists and deal with the importance of lags and the implications of destabilizing speculation in foreign markets. Taken as a whole, The Optimum Quantity of Money provides a comprehensive view of the body of monetary theory developed in leading centers of monetary analysis. This work is essential reading for economists and graduate students in the field. The volume will be no less important for practicing business and banking personnel as well. The new statement by Michael Bordo, a student of Friedman's and an expert in the field, provides a sense of where the field now stands in the economy and academy. Milton Friedman is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University. Before that, he was Distinguished Service Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago. He has also taught at Columbia University, the University of Wisconsin, the University of Minnesota, and Cambridge University. Among his many books are Essays in Positive Economics , A Program for Monetary Stability , Capitalism and Freedom , and A Monetary History of the United States . Michael D. Bordo is professor of economics at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, and author, with Lars Jonung, of, among other works, Demand for Money .

"Stimulating, provocative, often infuriating, but well worth reading."—Peter Newman, Economica "His critical blast blows like a north wind against the more pretentious erections of modern economics. It is however a healthy and invigorating blast, without malice and with a sincere regard for scientific objectivity."—K.E. Boulding, Political Science Quarterly "Certainly one of the most engrossing volumes that has appeared recently in economic theory."—William J. Baumol, Review of Economics and Statistics

This collection of essays presents a sampling of the significant contributions to twentieth-century economic thought and practice by Nobel Prize-winner Milton Friedman. Friedman is widely regarded as the leader of the Chicago school of economics, which stresses the importance of the quantity of money as an instrument of governmental policy and as a major determinant of business cycles and inflation. Making an early impact on the economics profession was his analysis of economics as an empirical science, and in particular, his conclusion that the only relevant test of the acceptability of economic hypotheses is the conformity of the predictions they generate with observation. His permanent income theory of consumption, his restatement of the quantity theory of money, and his hypothesis of natural rate of unemployment have by now become part of received economic doctrine. Outside the economic profession, Friedman is best known for his outspoken statements on public policy, particularly his consistent belief that a free-enterprise system with minimum governmental intervention in the economic process will best preserve and extend both human freedom and economic prosperity. A number of the essays reprinted here are eloquent expressions of his commitment to everyone's freedom to choose.

. 1981 4th imp, booklet, bright clean copy, no markings,Professional booksellers since 1981