 | This article relies largely or entirely on a single source .(August 2023) |
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| Author | Milton Friedman |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Aldine Publishing Company |
Publication date | 1962 |
| Pages | 285 |
Price Theory: A Provisional Text is an economics book by Milton Friedman.
Milton Friedman had a significant impact on graduate education in economics at the University of Chicago. He played a role in shaping the Chicago tradition in price theory, which began with Frank Knight and Jacob Viner in the 1920s and 1930s. This tradition has been spread globally by numerous students and scholars, including Friedman himself, as well as other notable economists from Chicago such as George Stigler, Gary Becker, and Ronald Coase. [1]
Friedman studied mathematics and economics at Rutgers University before pursuing graduate studies at the University of Chicago and later Columbia University. He received his Ph.D. from Columbia in 1946 and held various appointments outside academia during the period from 1935 to 1946. Friedman joined the faculty at the University of Chicago in 1946, where he taught price theory classes. [1]
Despite being known for his work in macroeconomics and monetarism, Friedman's teaching helped solidify the Chicago tradition in price theory. Price theory was a significant aspect of his legacy as a teacher, and he taught the subject from 1946 to 1964 and again from 1972 to 1976. Notable economists who took Friedman's price theory course include James M. Buchanan, Gary Becker, and Robert Lucas Jr., all of whom later became Nobel laureates. [1]
Friedman's book Price Theory: A Provisional Text, originally based on lecture notes taken by David I. Fand and Warren J. Gustus in 1951–52. These notes were popular among graduate students and eventually prompted Friedman to work on their publication. The revised edition was prepared when Friedman resumed teaching price theory in the early 1970s. [1]
Friedman's approach to price theory emphasized the insights of Alfred Marshall, combining theoretical analysis with real-world applications. This approach, characterized by its simplicity compared to more mathematically complex theories, offered a powerful tool for addressing a wide range of economic problems. Economists such as Robert Lucas and Gary Becker praised Friedman's approach for its broad applicability and impact. [1]
David Director Friedman is an American economist, physicist, legal scholar, and anarcho-capitalist theorist. Although his academic training was in chemistry and physics and not law or economics, he is known for his textbook writings on microeconomics and the libertarian theory of anarcho-capitalism, which is the subject of his most popular book, The Machinery of Freedom. Described by Walter Block as a "free-market anarchist" theorist, Friedman has also authored several other books and articles, including Price Theory: An Intermediate Text (1986), Law's Order: What Economics Has to Do with Law and Why It Matters (2000), Hidden Order: The Economics of Everyday Life (1996), and Future Imperfect (2008).
Milton Friedman was an American economist and statistician who received the 1976 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his research on consumption analysis, monetary history and theory and the complexity of stabilization policy. With George Stigler, Friedman was among the intellectual leaders of the Chicago school of economics, a neoclassical school of economic thought associated with the work of the faculty at the University of Chicago that rejected Keynesianism in favor of monetarism until the mid-1970s, when it turned to new classical macroeconomics heavily based on the concept of rational expectations. Several students, young professors and academics who were recruited or mentored by Friedman at Chicago went on to become leading economists, including Gary Becker, Robert Fogel, and Robert Lucas Jr.
Neoclassical economics is an approach to economics in which the production, consumption, and valuation (pricing) of goods and services are observed as driven by the supply and demand model. According to this line of thought, the value of a good or service is determined through a hypothetical maximization of utility by income-constrained individuals and of profits by firms facing production costs and employing available information and factors of production. This approach has often been justified by appealing to rational choice theory.
Gary Stanley Becker was an American economist who received the 1992 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. He was a professor of economics and sociology at the University of Chicago, and was a leader of the third generation of the Chicago school of economics.
Law and economics, or economic analysis of law, is the application of microeconomic theory to the analysis of law. The field emerged in the United States during the early 1960s, primarily from the work of scholars from the Chicago school of economics such as Aaron Director, George Stigler, and Ronald Coase. The field uses economics concepts to explain the effects of laws, assess which legal rules are economically efficient, and predict which legal rules will be promulgated. There are two major branches of law and economics; one based on the application of the methods and theories of neoclassical economics to the positive and normative analysis of the law, and a second branch which focuses on an institutional analysis of law and legal institutions, with a broader focus on economic, political, and social outcomes, and overlapping with analyses of the institutions of politics and governance.
The Chicago school of economics is a neoclassical school of economic thought associated with the work of the faculty at the University of Chicago, some of whom have constructed and popularized its principles. Milton Friedman and George Stigler are considered the leading scholars of the Chicago school.
Jacob Viner was a Canadian economist and is considered with Frank Knight and Henry Simons to be one of the "inspiring" mentors of the early Chicago school of economics in the 1930s: he was one of the leading figures of the Chicago faculty. Paul Samuelson named Viner as one of the several "American saints in economics" born after 1860. He was an important figure in the field of political economy.
George Joseph Stigler was an American economist. He was the 1982 laureate in Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences and is considered a key leader of the Chicago school of economics.
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Armen Albert Alchian was an American economist who made major contributions to microeconomic theory and the theory of the firm. He spent almost his entire career at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and is credited with turning its economics department into one of the country's best. He is also known as one of the founders of new institutional economics, and widely acknowledged for his work on property rights.
Arthur Frank Burns was an American economist and diplomat who served as the 10th chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1970 to 1978. He previously chaired the Council of Economic Advisers under President Dwight D. Eisenhower from 1953 to 1956, and served as the first Counselor to the President under Richard Nixon from January to November 1969. He also taught and researched at Rutgers University, Columbia University, and the National Bureau of Economic Research.
William M. Landes is an American economist who has written about the economic analysis of law and an emeritus professor at the University of Chicago Law School. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, which cited him for his work in the field. He is among the most cited law professors in American law reviews. Landes also is the original founder of Lexecon, a legal and economic consulting firm.
Anna Jacobson Schwartz was an American economist who worked at the National Bureau of Economic Research in New York City and a writer for The New York Times. Paul Krugman has said that Schwartz is "one of the world's greatest monetary scholars."
Steven Ng-Sheong Cheung is a Hong Kong-born American economist who specializes in the fields of transaction costs and property rights, following the approach of new institutional economics. He achieved his public fame with an economic analysis on China open-door policy after the 1980s. In his studies of economics, he focuses on economic explanation that is based on real world observation. He is also the first to introduce concepts from the Chicago School of Economics, especially price theory, into China. In 2016, Cheung claimed to have written "1,500 articles and 20 books in Chinese" during his academic career.
The following is a list of works by the prominent American economist Milton Friedman.
Between 2008 and 2011, the Milton Friedman Institute for Research in Economics was an academic center established at the University of Chicago as a collaborative, cross-disciplinary site for research in economics.
The Gary Becker Milton Friedman Institute for Research in Economics is a collaborative, cross-disciplinary center for research in economics. The institute was established at the University of Chicago in June 2011. It brought together the activities of two formerly independent economic research centers at the university: the Milton Friedman Institute for Research in Economics and the Becker Center on Chicago Price Theory.
Lloyd Wynn Mints (1888–1989) was an American economist, notable for his contributions to the quantity theory of money.
The Theory of Price is a book written by George Stigler. The book was first published in 1946, as a revision and expansion of The Theory of Competitive Price (1942), and has since been revised and reprinted several times. The book covers a range of topics related to microeconomics. Stigler's book was an advanced economics textbook originally intended for graduate students. Over time, it evolved and became The Theory of Price, expanding its scope and becoming a standard text at the undergraduate level. Stigler's work transitioned from the influence of Alfred Marshall and the inter-war School of economics to the post-WWII Chicago School, showing a shift towards greater analytical rigor and the use of mathematics. Throughout its editions, Stigler emphasized precision and positive theory.