Milton Friedman
Birth date: July 31, 1912
Died: November 16,2006
      Received the 1976 Nobel prize in Economic Sciences for his research on consumption analysis,
       monetary history and the theory and the complexity of stabilisation policy.
      Milton Friedman was an influential economist who advocated for a free-market economy, and
       whose work is reflected in his major books such as “Capitalism and Freedom (1962).”
      Most of Friedman’s impactful works during his career transpired at the University of Chicago.
      Friedman is regarded as an economist intellectual and free-market thinker – only comparable with
       John Keynes.
Early life and Education:
      He attended Rutgers University under a state scholarship program where he earned his bachelor’s
       degree in Economics and Statistics in 1932. One year later, Friedman earned a master’s degree at
       Chicago University and obtained his Ph.D. at Columbia University in 1946. He later studied income
       distribution in the U.S. at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). At this point, he
       focused his work on the analysis of income-expenditure surveys and, thereafter, worked on tax
       research and statistical analysis.
      During WW1, Milton worked for the federal government as a mathematical statistician for military-
       economic research at the Division of War Research and as an advisor of the U.S Department of the
       Treasury. In 1942, he proposed the Keynesian policy of taxation and recommended increasing taxes
       to curb wartime inflation and invented the first payroll withholding system.
Milton Friedmans contributions:
      After earning a Ph.D. in 1946, Friedman accepted an offer to teach economics at the University of
       Chicago, where he played a role in establishing an intellectual community. The 1957 Theory of
       Consumption Function marked his first literary breakthrough in the economic discipline.
      In connection with Friedman’s theory, he developed the permanent income hypothesis, which
       explained why increasing tax in the short term reduces savings and maintains the level of static
       consumption.
The Monetarism and Consumption Theory:
      Within the composition of the Keynesian theory, Friedman devised the theory of monetarism that
       embodied a slightly adjusted economic policy. He outlined the role of monetarism and suggested
       that monetary supply affects price levels. Friedman further criticized the Phillips Curve and the
       Keynesian multiplier based on the theory of monetarism.
      In 1957, he proposed a treatise called A Theory of Consumption Function, whose viewpoint went
       against that of the Keynesian’s. By introducing the term “permanent income,” he changed how
       economists interpreted the consumption function.
                                                                                    John Maynard Keynes
                                                                                    Theory vs Milton
                                                                                    Friedmans Monetarist
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