Theory and Measurement: Causality Issues in Milton Friedman's Monetary Economics
Author(s): J. Daniel Hammond (Author)
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Publication Date: 21 Aug. 2008
Edition: Revised ed.
Language: English
Print length: 252 pages
ISBN-10: 0521022649
ISBN-13: 9780521022644
Book Description
Focusing on the period of Milton Friedman’s collaboration with Anna J. Schwartz, from 1948 to 1991, this 1996 work examines the history of debates between Friedman and his critics over money’s causal role in business cycles. Professor Hammond shows that critics’ reactions were grounded in two distinctive features of Friedman and Schwartz’s way of doing economic analysis – their National Bureau business cycle methods and Friedman’s Marshallian methodology. With the post-war dominance of Cowles Commission methods and Walrasian methodology, Friedman and Schwartz’s monetary economics appeared to contemporary critics to be ‘measurement without theory’. Drawing extensively upon unpublished materials, Professor Hammond’s treatment offers new insights on Milton Friedman’s attempts to settle debates with his critics and his eventual recognition of the methodological impediments. The book will interest monetary economists and macroeconomists, as well as historians of economics and methodologists.
Editorial Reviews
Review
‘… I consider the overall scientific quality of the book excellent. Any scholar of the history of the twentieth-century macroeconomics will find it stimulating.’ History of Economic Ideas
Book Description
This 1996 work examines the history of debates between Friedman and his critics over money’s causal role in business cycles from 1948 to 1991.
From the Back Cover
Focusing on the period of Milton Friedman’s collaboration with Anna J. Schwartz, this work examines the history of debates between Friedman and his critics over money’s causal role in business cycles. Professor Hammond shows that critics’ reactions were grounded in two distinctive features of Friedman and Schwartz’s way of doing economic analysis – their National Bureau business-cycle methods and Friedman’s Marshallian methodology. With the postwar dominance of Cowles Commission methods and Walrasian methodology, Friedman and Schwartz’s monetary economics appeared to contemporary critics to be “measurement without theory”. Drawing extensively on unpublished materials, Professor Hammond’s treatment offers new insights on Friedman’s attempts to settle debates with his critics and his eventual recognition of the methodological impediments. The book will interest monetary economists and macroeconomists, as well as historians of economics and methodologists.
Wow! eBook
