Milton Friedman Manuscript on J.M. Keynes’ The General Theory.

FRIEDMAN, Milton.

Item Number: 5092

One page signed manuscript from Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman discussing Keynes’ The General Theory. In it he writes, a page of manuscript in Friedman’s hand, written in 1971 in reply ‘to criticisms of my work from a so-called Keynesian point of view’, Friedman writes “One reward from writing this reply has been the necessity of rereading earlier work, in particular [Keynes’s] . . . General Theory. The General Theory is a great book, at once more naive and more profound than the ‘Keynesian economics’ that Leijonhufvud contrasts with the ‘economics of Keynes.’…“I believe that Keynes’s theory is the right kind of theory in its simplicity, its concentration on a few key magnitudes, its potential fruitfulness. I have been led to reject it, not on these grounds, but because I believe that it has been contradicted by evidence: its predictions have not been confirmed by experience. This failure suggests that it has not isolated what are ‘really’ the key factors in short-run economic change. “The General Theory is profound in the wide range of problems to which Keynes applies his hypothesis, in the interpretations of the operation of modern economies and, particularly, of capital markets that are strewn throughout the book…” A few lines crossed out, signed by Milton Friedman. Matted and framed. An important and unique document linking Friedman and Keynes, two of the greatest economist’s of the twentieth century, with the former’s critique of the latter’s magnum opus The General Theory.