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“THE INITIATED”: AARON DIRECTOR AND THE CHICAGO MONETARY TRADITION

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 February 2022

George S. Tavlas
George S. Tavlas*
Affiliation:
George S. Tavlas: Bank of Greece and the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.
*
Correspondence may be addressed to George Tavlas, Bank of Greece, 21 E Venizelos Ave, Athens, 10250, Greece, Tel. no. +30 210 320 2370; Fax. no. +30 210 320 2432; email address: gtavlas@bankofgreece.gr.
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Abstract

Aaron Director taught at the University of Chicago from 1930 to 1934 and from 1946 to 1965. Both periods corresponded to crucial stages in the development of Chicago monetary economics under the leaderships of Henry Simons and Milton Friedman, respectively. Any impact that Director may have had in the development of those stages and on the relationship between the views of Simons and Friedman has been frustrated by Director’s lack of publications. I provide evidence, much of it for the first time, showing the important role played by Director in the development of Chicago monetary economics, including his role as a transmitter of Simons’s ideas to Friedman.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of the History of Economic Thought , Volume 44 , Issue 1 , March 2022 , pp. 1 - 23
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the History of Economics Society

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Footnotes

I have benefitted from comments from the editor, Pedro Duarte, two referees, and Harris Dellas, David Friedman, Thomas Humphrey, Ed Nelson, George Selgin, Stephen Stigler, the late Richard Timberlake, and Michael Ulan. I thank Sarah Patton and the other members of the staff at the Hoover Institution Library & Archives for their assistance. I thank Elisavet Bosdelekidou and Maria Monopoli for research support.

References

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