The main assumptions and theses of the monetarist school in economics

Abstract

The term monetarism as a term for the macroeconomic doctrine associated and identified explicitly with Milton Friedman and the University of Chicago was coined by Karl Brunner in 1968. It gained importance on theoretical grounds in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and achieved its greatest impact on economic policy in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It owed its popularity to the prevailing stagflation of the 1970s. Just as the Great Depression had shaken faith in the market and liberalism, stagflation caused a retreat from Keynesian economics and a rebirth of classical ideas. On theoretical grounds, a new and more radical school - the new classical economics - grew out of monetarism. However, it was monetarism that became part of the mainstream and the reference point for most of the discussions revolving around key theoretical issues and the role of the state in the economy. M. Friedman, born in 1912 in New York, one of the most prominent and controversial economists of the 20th century was the founder of monetarism. From the very beginning of his academic career, he was an ardent supporter of economic liberalism, and from these positions he consistently and on every occasion criticized Keynesianism, as well as neo-Keynesianism. In his opinion, market imperfections resulted from state interference in the country’s economy, and also from the monopolistic position of trade unions. He also believed that all expenditures for the improvement of the economy, as well as social protection of the poorest social groups, were unjustified. The state should limit its activities to the maintenance of public order and safety and uphold the law, especially the right to private property. Looking at the growth of the monetarist school through the lens of its historical development, we clearly see three stages. It began with the evolution of the quantity theory of money approach from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s, through the expectations-supported Phillips curve analysis that monetarist analysis assimilated in the second half of the 1960s, and ended with the monetary approach to balance of payments and exchange rate determination that was incorporated into monetarist analysis in the early 1970s. Researchers associated with the monetarist school emphasize the pro-cyclical role of the money supply (i.e. the ahead of time movement of other variables such as wages, prices, production - both in nominal and real terms).
Therefore, the central bank should ensure a constant rate of increase in the money supply (the so-called k-percentage rule) setting it at the level of 3-5% per year for the economy. The proposal of such a growth rate of supply resulted from the fact that this was the natural growth rate of the supply potential of the economy. According to monetarists, in the long run the economy approaches the state of full exploitation of production potential, so if the amount of money in circulation grows at the same rate as production, the average price level does not change, so there is no inflation.