IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/imk/wpaper/134-2014.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Milton Friedmans economics and political economy: an old Keynesian critique

Author

Listed:
  • Thomas I. Palley

Abstract

Milton Friedman's influence on the economics profession has been enormous. In part, his success was due to political forces that have made neoliberalism the dominant global ideology, but Friedman also rode those forces and contributed to them. Friedman's professional triumph is testament to the weak intellectual foundations of the economics profession which accepted ideas that are conceptually and empirically flawed. His success has taken economics back in a pre-Keynesian direction and squeezed Keynesianism out of the academy. Friedman's thinking also frames so-called new Keynesian economics which is simply new classical macroeconomics with the addition of imperfect competition and nominal rigidities. By enabling the claim that macroeconomics is fully characterized by a divide between new Keynesian and new classical macroeconomics, new Keynesianism closes the pincer that excludes old Keynesianism. As long as that pincer holds, economics will remain under Friedman's shadow.

Suggested Citation

  • Thomas I. Palley, 2014. "Milton Friedmans economics and political economy: an old Keynesian critique," IMK Working Paper 134-2014, IMK at the Hans Boeckler Foundation, Macroeconomic Policy Institute.
    • Handle: RePEc:imk:wpaper:134-2014
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.boeckler.de/pdf/p_imk_wp_134_2014.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Barro, Robert J, 1974. "Are Government Bonds Net Wealth?," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 82(6), pages 1095-1117, Nov.-Dec..
    2. William Poole, 1969. "Optimal choice of monetary policy instruments in a simple stochastic macro model," Special Studies Papers 2, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    3. Krugman, Paul & Taylor, Lance, 1978. "Contractionary effects of devaluation," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 8(3), pages 445-456, August.
    4. Okun, Arthur M, 1980. "Rational-Expectations-with-Misperceptions as a Theory of the Business Cycle," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 12(4), pages 817-825, November.
    5. Sarno,Lucio & Taylor,Mark P., 2003. "The Economics of Exchange Rates," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521485845, January.
    6. Lucas, Robert E, Jr, 1973. "Some International Evidence on Output-Inflation Tradeoffs," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 63(3), pages 326-334, June.
    7. Rogoff, Kenneth, 1999. "Monetary Models of Dollar/Yen/Euro Nominal Exchange Rates: Dead or Undead?," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 109(459), pages 655-659, November.
    8. Krueger, Anne O, 1974. "The Political Economy of the Rent-Seeking Society," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 64(3), pages 291-303, June.
    9. Don Patinkin, 1958. "Liquidity Preference and Loanable Funds : Stock and Flow Analysis," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 25(100), pages 300-318, November.
    10. Barro, Robert J & Gordon, David B, 1983. "A Positive Theory of Monetary Policy in a Natural Rate Model," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 91(4), pages 589-610, August.
    11. Mishkin, Frederic S, 1982. "Does Anticipated Monetary Policy Matter? An Econometric Investigation," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 90(1), pages 22-51, February.
    12. Tobin, James, 1969. "A General Equilibrium Approach to Monetary Theory," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 1(1), pages 15-29, February.
    13. Meese, Richard A. & Rogoff, Kenneth, 1983. "Empirical exchange rate models of the seventies : Do they fit out of sample?," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 14(1-2), pages 3-24, February.
    14. Thomas I. Palley, 2008. "Keynesian Models of Deflation and Depression Revisited: Inside Debt and Price Flexibility," Working Papers wp169, Political Economy Research Institute, University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
    15. William Poole, 1970. "Optimal Choice of Monetary Policy Instruments in a Simple Stochastic Macro Model," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 84(2), pages 197-216.
    16. Hyman P. Minsky, 1992. "The Financial Instability Hypothesis," Economics Working Paper Archive wp_74, Levy Economics Institute.
    17. Palley, Thomas I., 2008. "Keynesian models of deflation and depression revisited," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 68(1), pages 167-177, October.
    18. Simon Kuznets & Lillian Epstein & Elizabeth Jenks, 1946. "National Product since 1869," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number kuzn46-1, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ötsch, Walter Otto, 2015. "Die Politische Ökonomie "des" Marktes: Eine Zusammenfassung zur Wirkungsgeschichte von Friedrich A. Hayek," Working Paper Serie des Instituts für Ökonomie Ök-10, Hochschule für Gesellschaftsgestaltung (HfGG), Institut für Ökonomie.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Akhand Akhtar Hossain, 2009. "Central Banking and Monetary Policy in the Asia-Pacific," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 12777.
    2. Thomas I. Palley, 2013. "Keynesian, Classical and New Keynesian Approaches to Fiscal Policy: Comparison and Critique," Review of Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 25(2), pages 179-204, April.
    3. Frederick van der Ploeg, 2005. "Back to Keynes?," CESifo Economic Studies, CESifo Group, vol. 51(4), pages 777-822.
    4. Horvath, Julius, 2003. "Optimum currency area theory: A selective review," BOFIT Discussion Papers 15/2003, Bank of Finland Institute for Emerging Economies (BOFIT).
    5. Hiroki Murakami, 2016. "Alternative monetary policies and economic stability in a medium-term Keynesian model," Evolutionary and Institutional Economics Review, Springer, vol. 13(2), pages 323-362, December.
    6. McCallum, Bennett T., 1981. "Price level determinacy with an interest rate policy rule and rational expectations," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 8(3), pages 319-329.
    7. Francisco Rosende, 2002. "La Nueva Síntesis Keynesiana: Análisis e Implicancias de Política Monetaria," Latin American Journal of Economics-formerly Cuadernos de Economía, Instituto de Economía. Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile., vol. 39(117), pages 203-233.
    8. Roberto Tamborini, 2007. "Rescuing the LM (and the money market) in a modern Macro course," Department of Economics Working Papers 0706, Department of Economics, University of Trento, Italia.
    9. Broadbent, Ben & Barro, Robert J., 1997. "Central bank preferences and macroeconomic equilibrium," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 39(1), pages 17-43, June.
    10. Francisco Rosende, 2002. "La Nueva Síntesis Keynesiana: Análisis e Implicancias de Política," Documentos de Trabajo 199, Instituto de Economia. Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile..
    11. Marek Dabrowski, 1999. "Disinflation, Monetary Policy and Fiscal Constraints. Experience of the Countries in Transition," CASE Network Reports 0016, CASE-Center for Social and Economic Research.
    12. Hwang, Chiun-Lin, 1989. "Optimal monetary policy in an open macroeconomic model with rational expectation," ISU General Staff Papers 1989010108000010197, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.
    13. Bordo, Michael D., 1986. "Explorations in monetary history: A survey of the literature," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 23(4), pages 339-415, October.
    14. Thomas I. Palley, 2013. "Horizontalists, verticalists, and structuralists: the theory of endogenous money reassessed," Review of Keynesian Economics, Edward Elgar Publishing, vol. 1(4), pages 406—424-4, OCT.
    15. SCHELLEKENS, Philip, 1999. "Optimal monetary policy delegation to conservative central banks," Working Papers 1999009, University of Antwerp, Faculty of Business and Economics.
    16. Schellekens, Philip, 2000. "Caution and conservatism in the making of monetary policy," Working Paper Series 0025, European Central Bank.
    17. Lucas Papademos, 2005. "Macroeconomic theory and monetary policy: the contributions of Franco Modigliani and the ongoing debate," BNL Quarterly Review, Banca Nazionale del Lavoro, vol. 58(233-234), pages 187-214.
    18. George A. Akerlof, 2007. "The Missing Motivation in Macroeconomics," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(1), pages 5-36, March.
    19. Klausinger, Hansjörg, 2000. "Walras' law and the IS-LM model. A tale of progress and regress," Department of Economics Working Paper Series 69, WU Vienna University of Economics and Business.
    20. Habib Ahmed & C. Paul Hallwood & Stephen M. Miller, 2006. "The Exchange Rate-Investment Nexus and Exchange Rate Instability: Another Reason for 'Fear of Floating'," Working papers 2006-15, University of Connecticut, Department of Economics, revised Jan 2009.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Friedman; monetarism; new classical macroeconomics; new Keynesian; neoliberalism;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:imk:wpaper:134-2014. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sabine Nemitz (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/imkhbde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.