The Economics Book

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

Economic policy

KEY THINKER

Milton Friedman (1912–2006)

BEFORE

1911 Irving Fisher formalizes the quantity theory of money, which proposes that prices are directly related to the size of the money supply.

1936 John Maynard Keynes questions the effectiveness of policies to control the money supply.

AFTER

1970s Robert Lucas develops models that assume “rational expectations.”

1970s–80s Many countries adopt formal monetary growth targets, by which governments attempt to control growth in the size of the money supply in order to keep down inflation.

Writing in the 1930s, John Maynard Keynes argued that policies aimed at controlling the money ...