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A NEGLECTED INCONSISTENCY IN MILTON FRIEDMAN’S AEA PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 February 2016

James Forder*
Affiliation:
Balliol College Oxford, [email protected].

Abstract

Milton Friedman (1968)—his famous Presidential Address to the American Economic Association—contains an elementary error right at the heart of what is usually supposed to be the paper’s crucial argument. That is the argument to the effect that during an inflation, changing expectations shift the Phillips curve. It is suggested that the fact of this mistake and of its having gone all but unnoticed are points of historical interest. Further reflections, drawing on the arguments of Forder (2014), Macroeconomics and the Phillips Curve Myth, are suggested.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The History of Economics Society 2016 

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References

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