Milton Friedman: Constructing an Anti-Keynes

The paper considers Keynes’s major contributions before "The General Theory", namely "A Tract on Monetary Reform" and "A Treatise on Money", and shows that they were close to the views which Friedman would later develop. However, "The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money" represented a major challenge to the orthodoxy of the time, and it was to this that Friedman radically objected. We identify the main areas in which Keynes departed from the mainstream theory of the time, and show how Friedman attempted to undermine each of Keynes’s major contributions and the extent to which he was successful. Friedman regarded Keynes’s contributions as detrimental to, and a definitive step backward for, the economics profession.

Keywords: Friedman, Keynes, History of macroeconomics, Macroeconomic policy

JEL Classification: B22, B31, E6

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

Freedman, Craig and Harcourt, G.C. and Kriesler, Peter and Nevile, John, Milton Friedman: Constructing an Anti-Keynes (December 17, 2013). UNSW Australian School of Business Research Paper No. 2013-35, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2374956 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2374956