During the late-1940s and the early-1950s Milton Friedman favored a rule under which fiscal policy would be used to generate changes in the money supply with the aim of stabilizing output at full employment. He believed that the economy is inherently unstable because of endogenous movements in...

Milton Friedman's influence on the economics profession has been enormous. In part, his success was due to political forces that have made neoliberalism the dominant global ideology, but Friedman also rode those forces and contributed to them. Friedman's professional triumph is testament to the...

Lucas (1972) was a paper that permanently changed the course of macroeconomics, even though its "money supply surprise" model lost its central place in the area within a decade because of empirical difficulties. However, Lucas's novel methodology, based on clearing markets and rational...

This paper is about the Department of Economics at the University of Chicago, between 1947 and 1982. The paper has the form of a conversation between the two authors and covers issues such as the existence of a "Chicago School," the Department's governance, the personalities of some well-known...