Theory and Measurement: Causality Issues in Milton Friedman's Monetary Economics (Historical Perspectives on Modern Economics)
Cambridge University Press
Edition: Illustrated, 3/29/1996
EAN 9780521552059, ISBN10: 0521552052
Hardcover, 250 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 1.7 cm
Language: English
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 Drawing extensively upon unpublished materials, Professor Hammond's treatment offers new insights on Milton Friedman's attempts to settle debates with his critics and his eventual recognition of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.
Introduction
1. Theory and measurement at the National Bureau
2. Origins of Friedman's Marshallian methodology
3. Origins of the monetary project
4. Critiques from within the National Bureau
5. Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc, part I
6. Reactions to the Monetary History
7. Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc, part II
8. Friedman and his critics on the theoretical framework
9. The Great Depression
10. Measurement without measurement
Hendry and Ericsson's critique
Conclusion
Bibliography.
'… 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