I was saddened today to learn of the death of Milton Friedman, who was awarded the 1976 Nobel Prize for Economic Science.
Milton Friedman was one of the most influential economists of the 20th Century.
His lasting contribution to economics will be as the father of monetarism. The relationship between low and stable inflation, monetary policy and economic growth can be found in modern monetary policy frameworks.
Friedman's academic work on monetary theory, combined with his challenge to the Keynesian orthodoxy that governments, rather than the individual's freedom to choose, should be the basis of economic decision making, was to have a lasting influence.
As important as his work on monetarism was Friedman's view on the relationship between economic freedom and political freedom. In Capitalism and Freedom, Friedman said that political freedom cannot be sustained at the same time that economic freedom is being assailed.
The creeping size of government, taxes and regulation that occurred up until the 1970s was in Friedman's view a constraint on individual liberty, as much as a constraint on economic efficiency.
The stable monetary and fiscal policy frameworks that are the hallmarks of successful western economies are in part a legacy of Milton Friedman's contribution to economics.