Milton Friedman

Milton Friedman was an American economist and statistician, born in Brooklyn, New York City, who received the 1976 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. A leader of the Chicago school of economics, he introduced the permanent income hypothesis and promoted monetarism, arguing for a steady, small expansion of the money supply. With Anna Schwartz he wrote A Monetary History of the United States, 1867–1960 (1963), which traced the Great Depression to a severe monetary contraction. His book Capitalism and Freedom (1962) argued for free markets, school vouchers and a negative income tax, and he advised Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher.