Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-mp689 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-23T21:19:18.368Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

A NEGLECTED INCONSISTENCY IN MILTON FRIEDMAN’S AEA PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 February 2016

James Forder*
Affiliation:
Balliol College Oxford, james.forder@balliol.ox.ac.uk.

Abstract

Milton Friedman (1968)—his famous Presidential Address to the American Economic Association—contains an elementary error right at the heart of what is usually supposed to be the paper’s crucial argument. That is the argument to the effect that during an inflation, changing expectations shift the Phillips curve. It is suggested that the fact of this mistake and of its having gone all but unnoticed are points of historical interest. Further reflections, drawing on the arguments of Forder (2014), Macroeconomics and the Phillips Curve Myth, are suggested.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The History of Economics Society 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Akerlof, George, Dickens, William, and Perry, George L.. 1996. “The Macroeconomics of Low Inflation.” Brookings Papers on Economic Activity 27 (1): 159.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Council of Economic Advisers. 1962. Economic Report of the President. Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
de Vroey, Michel. 1998. “Accounting for Involuntary Unemployment in Neoclassical Theory: Some Lessons from Sixty Years of Uphill Struggle.” In Backhouse, R. E., Hausman, D. M., Mäki, U., and Salanti, A., eds., Economics and Methodology. Houndmills: Palgrave, pp. 177224.Google Scholar
Forder, James. 2010. “The Historical Place of the ‘Friedman-Phelps’ Expectations Critique.” European Journal of the History of Economic Thought 17 (3): 493511.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Forder, James. 2013. “Macroeconomics and the L-shaped Aggregate Supply Curve.” In Harcourt, G. C. and Kriesler, P., eds., Oxford Handbook of Post-Keynesian Economics. Volume 2. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 245264.Google Scholar
Forder, James. 2014. Macroeconomics and the Phillips Curve Myth. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Forder, James. 2015. “Textbooks on the Phillips Curve.” History of Political Economy 47 (2): 207240.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Friedman, Milton. 1958. “The Supply of Money and Changes in Prices and Output.” In The Relationship of Prices to Economic Stability and Growth. Compendium of papers submitted by panelists appearing before the JEC 85th Congress, 2d Sess, 31 March 1958, pp. 241256.Google Scholar
Friedman, Milton. 1968. “The Role of Monetary Policy.” American Economic Review 58: 117.Google Scholar
Friedman, Milton. 1972. “Monetary Policy.” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 116 (3): 183196.Google Scholar
Gordon, Robert James. 1970. “The Recent Acceleration of Inflation and its Lessons for the Future.” Brookings Papers on Economic Activity 1: 841.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gordon, Robert James. 1977. “Can the Inflation of the 1970s Be Explained?” Brookings Papers on Economic Activity 1: 253277.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gordon, Robert James. 1981. “Output Fluctuations and Gradual Price Adjustment.” Journal of Economic Literature 19 (2): 493530.Google Scholar
Krugman, Paul. 1994. Peddling Prosperity. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
Laidler, David E. W. 1990. “The Legacy of the Monetarist Controversy.” Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis Economic Review 72 (2): 4964.Google Scholar
Laidler, David E. W. 1994. “Some Aspects of Monetarism circa 1970: A View from 1994.” Kredit und Kapital 3: 323344.Google Scholar
Laidler, David E. W. 2015. “Three Revolutions in Macroeconomics: Their Nature and Influence.” European Journal of the History of Economic Thought 22 (1): 125.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lipsey, Richard George. 1978. “The Place of the Phillips Curve in Macroeconomic Models.” In Bergstrom, A. R., Catt, A., Peston, M. H., and Silverstone, B. D. J., eds., Stability and Inflation. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, pp. 4976.Google Scholar
Phelps, Edmund S. 1967. “Phillips Curves, Expectations of Inflation and Optimal Unemployment over Time.” Economica 34 (135): 254281.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rivot, Silvie. 2015. “Rule-based Frameworks in Historical Perspective: Keynes' and Friedman's Monetary Policies versus Contemporary Policy-rules.” European Journal of the History of Economic Thought 22 (4): 601633.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Samuelson, Paul Anthony. 1967. Economics. Seventh edition. New York: McGraw Hill.Google Scholar
Schultze, Charles Louis. 1959. “Recent Inflation in the United States.” In Study of Employment, Growth and Price Levels. Joint Economic Committee, US Congress, Sept 1959. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, pp. 1137.Google Scholar
Skidelsky, Robert. 1996. Keynes. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Solow, Robert Merton. 1968. “Recent Controversy on the Theory of Inflation: An Eclectic View.” In Rousseas, S. W., ed., Inflation: Its Causes, Consequences, and Control. Wilton, CT: Calvin K. Kazanjian Economics Foundation, pp. 216.Google Scholar
Takami, Norikazu. 2015. “The Baffling New Inflation: How Cost-push Inflation Theories Influenced Policy Debate in the Late-1950s United States.” History of Political Economy 47 (4): 605629.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tobin, James. 1972. “Inflation and Unemployment.” American Economic Review 62 (1): 118.Google Scholar
Tobin, James. 1995. “The Natural Rate as New Classical Macroeconomics.” In Cross, R. B., ed., The Natural Rate of Unemployment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 3242.CrossRefGoogle Scholar