Rose Friedman (née Director), the Chicago-trained economist, was a very important contributor to Milton Friedman’s scholarly output, popular writings, and television series. His remarkable role in society was to a significant extent a joint role from which she cannot be separated.

This article is a reflection on the question of whether economists have a tendency to become more classical liberal as they age. It was written in my “overseer role” on a project led by Daniel Klein on the ideological migration of the 71 individuals awarded the Nobel Prize in economic...

The project “The Ideological Migration of the Economics Laureates” fills the September 2013 issue of Econ Journal Watch. The project provides profiles of each of the 71 individuals who, from 1969 through 2012, won the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel....

Scholars collected into a group within a university department pollinate one another and sometimes come jointly to project a certain flavor or brand of scholarship, often led by minds of singular vision and originality. A notable case of such emergence sprang from the department of economics at...

This article traces the evolution of Milton Friedman’s ideological views over the course of his adult life. It finds the evolution to be from a moderate liberalism to a definite classical liberalism and then, during the last 50 years of his life, to an increasingly robust libertarianism....

One answer is that Milton Friedman possessed a rare combination of attributes that enabled him to communicate as easily with a mass audience as with his professional peers. He also emerged on the public stage at a time when his message of limited government had unusual resonance. Developments in...

This essay responds to the question, “Why is there no Milton Friedman today?” In doing so, it briefly examines several aspects of Friedman’s professional life that contributed to his success in the academic, policy, and public realms as well as the influence of the social and political...

This article addresses two questions: Are there fewer economist public intellectuals today than previously, and if so, why? and: Are there fewer economists who support free markets today, and if so, why? It answers yes to the first question, suggesting that the selection process for graduate...

Why is there no Milton Friedman today? The new structure of things—or lack of structure—makes it hard for someone to emerge as a focal representative of classical liberalism. But every day, innumerable souls breathe new vitality into the cogent perspective that Friedman and others gave to...

That there is no Milton Friedman today is not a mystery; the mystery is how Milton Friedman could have been. The facts of Friedman’s biography make him unique among twentieth-century public figures. He had extensive knowledge and expertise in mathematics and statistics. Yet he became a critic...