Note: This is post #114 in a weekly video series on basic economics.
A monetarist is an economist who holds the strong belief that the economy’s performance is determined almost entirely by changes in the money supply. The most well-known monetarist is Milton Friedman, who wrote about his beliefs in the book “A Monetary History of The United States, 1867 – 1960.” In the book he argued that a lack of money supply was a cause of the Great Depression.
As Tyler Cowen of Marginal Revolution University explains, monetarism is a “goldilocks” theory that argues for a steady rate of fairly low inflation to keep the economy on track.
(If you find the pace of the videos too slow, I’d recommend watching them at 1.5 to 2 times the speed. You can adjust the speed at which the video plays by clicking on “Settings” (the gear symbol) and changing “Speed” from normal to 1.25, 1.5 or 2.)
Click here to see other videos in the Introduction to Economics series.
