The Nature and Origins of Friedman’s Influence

Since the death of Keynes, no economist has exerted a comparable influence to that of Friedman. He influenced economists’ methodology before he influenced their policy prescriptions: positive economics was the antidote to the use of ‘arbitrary’ principles such as Occam’s razor which sought to discriminate between ‘formal models of imaginary worlds’ (Friedman 1953, 283). As a policy analyst, Friedman displayed ‘inventiveness’ (Stigler 1998, 155). His advocacy of flexible exchange rates is a classic illustration of the process by which academic ideas become fertile.