The influential tradition in 20th century economics associated with the University of Chicago economics department and especially with Milton Friedman, George Stigler, and Gary Becker. The Chicago School emphasizes free markets, price theory as the central analytical tool, monetary policy as the primary responsibility of central banks, and empirical testing of economic hypotheses rather than purely theoretical or historical methodology. Distinct from the Austrian School tradition (Mises, Hayek) with which it shares classical liberal political commitments, the Chicago School is more empirically oriented and more comfortable with mathematical modeling. Its influence on late 20th century economic policy was enormous, shaping the shift away from Keynesian consensus in the 1970s and 80s and influencing deregulation, monetarism, and market-oriented reforms across the Western world.
Chicago School Economics
The influential economic tradition associated with the University of Chicago economics department, emphasizing free markets, price theory, monetary discipline, and empirical rather than historical or philosophical methodology.
Augusto Pinochet
1915–2006
Augusto Pinochet was Chile's military dictator from 1973 to 1990, pairing brutal political repression with radical free-market reforms crafted by Friedman-trained 'Chicago Boys'
ThinkerMilton Friedman
1912–2006
Milton Friedman was a classical liberal economist and Nobel laureate whose monetarism and popular case for free markets made him the most politically influential economist of the second half of the 20th century
ThinkerJulian Simon
Julian Simon was a free-market economist whose optimistic case for human ingenuity as the “ultimate resource” reshaped debates over population, scarcity, and environmental limits
ThinkerDavid Friedman
David Friedman is a leading proponent of anarcho-capitalism whose case for a stateless society rests on consequentialist rather than moral-rights grounds