Teoretické otázky inflácie v interpretácii Miltona Friedmana
THEORETICAL ASPECTS OF INFLATION BY MILTON FRIEDMAN

Summary/Abstract: American economist Milton Friedman, the Nobel price winner for the economics in 1976, is a worldwide distinguished authority in the field of economic theory and praxis. It happens rarely that a scientist-economist had such a great influence, direct or indirect determined not only scientific research, but also a real economic-and-political reality. In the second half of 20th century (together with J. M. Keyness) he significantly shaped both current (modern) economic theory and economic policy. This article takes into consideration the Friedman’s inflation theory, which together with the analysis of money demand represents one of the basic building stones of his monetary theory. Perhaps it will not be too exaggerating to say that Friedman and the inflation problem belong together forever, in addition some parallels can be found in their „biographies“. In analogy with Friedman, who started to present his liberal ideas (as „outsider“) in the period when Keynesian theories absolutely dominated, he slowly made his career up to the top of the „Olympus of the economics“ and his monetarism theory became worldwide acknowledged, similarly inflation underwent a considerable development, when in the post-war period changed from an ad hoc phenomenon to become a universal phenomenon, and which during 70-ties gradually turned to be a macroecono-mic problem number one in the majority of developed market economies. An objective of this article is to provide an overall review of the Friedman’s mone-tary concept of inflation (which also impacted the reality of providing the stabilizing policy in transition economies) considering it from the theory-and-methodology point of view, and also viewing the proposed ways for the inflation treatment, although not avoiding a critical assessment. The Friedman’s interpretation of inflation can be ranked as a monetary concept of inflation. M. Friedman linked his theory with the ideas of quantitative theories and he understands inflation as a purely monetary phenomenon – being a result of an excessive amount of monies in circulation (i. e. faster growth of M2 in nominal values to compare the product growth). Friedman takes inflation as a sickness of the monetary system, which, if not early enough diagnosed, could destroy the society.

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