Harrington's stats and Chip

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Mon Jan 29 08:06:11 PST 2001


Rob Schaap wrote:


>Milton Friedman, a member of the Mont Pelerin group of libertarian
>economists (von Hayek and von Mises were but two notable colleagues) had
>long argued for an end to fiscal policy. Until the 1970s, Friedman's many
>writings had found favour in some conservative quarters (Kemp on Capitol
>Hill and the American Enterprise Institute for two) but had failed to
>capture the public imagination. Mainstream economist Paul Krugman (1994:
>40) avers,
>
> "I think it is fair to say that up until the late 1960s Friedman
>and his followers, while influential, were regarded by many of their
>colleagues as faintly disreputable."

That's putting it mildly. Speaking as someone who was one of the followers, though a naive undergraduate one, we were regarded as borderline mad by the economic mainstream. I took intermediate macro from William Nordhaus in 1972. He had us play with an economic model he'd built (without, of course, disclosing the assumptions, which were no doubt vulgar Keynesian). I ran his economy according to good Friedmanite principles, balancing the budget and throttling back on M1, and I ended up with a 20% unemployment rate. Not good for my grade.


>Edward Herman (1995: 36), from an admittedly more left-wing viewpoint, is
>less diplomatic:
>
> "Friedman's methodology in attempting to prove his models have set
>a new standard in opportunism, manipulation, and the abuse of scientific
>method."

Paul Diesing (1985). "Hypothesis Testing and Data Interpretation: The Case of Milton Friedman", Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology 3, pp 61-89.

Doug



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