The Influence of Friedman’s Methodological Essay”, Paper presented at the Conference Milton Friedman’s Essay at 50, Erasmus Institute for Philosophy and Economics

necessarily follow that it has had a great influence on the practice of economics, because practicing economists pay little attention to free-standing discussions of methodology; at best they learn their methodology by seeing it put to work on substantive problems.1 Arguably, Friedman and Schwartz's (1963) A Monetary History of the United States, has had more influence on the methodology of practicing economist than did F53. The most pervasive methodological influence in macroeconomics in the last thirty years has been the insistence of new classical economists on reducing macroeconomics to microeconomics, and in this they paid no attention to philosophical debates about reductionism Friedman did not intend his essay to be a contribution to methodology, about which he did not claim any expertise, but to be only a description of the approach he found useful in his practice. For that his failure to clarify whether he is an instrumentalist, falsificationist or whatever- the issue on which methodologists have focused- is unimportant. (See Hirsch and de Marchi, 1990, p. 80). I deal only with F53's effect on his intended audience, practicing economists, and discuss almost only mainstream economists. Heterodox economists have been highly critical of F53, so that it is unlikely to have had much influence on them. I also omit its influence on econometric