+1 862 207 3288 For decades Keynesians and classical economists split into autonomous areas, the former studying macroeconomics and the latter studying microeconomics. In the 1970s new classical macroeconomics challenged Keynesians to ground their macroeconomic theory in microeconomics. The main policy difference in this second stage of macroeconomics is an increased focus on monetary policy, such as interest rates and money supply. This school emerged during the 1970s with the Lucas critique. New classical macroeconomics based on rational expectations, which means that choices are made optimally considering time and uncertainty, and all markets are clearing. New classical macroeconomics is generally based on real business cycle models such as the work of Edward Prescott.
Monetarism, led by Milton Friedman, holds that inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon. It rejects fiscal policy because it leads to “crowding out” of the private sector. Further, it does not wish to combat inflation or deflation by means of active demand management as in Keynesian economics, but by means of monetary policy rules, such as keeping the rate of growth of the money supply constant over time.
