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This chapter explores a number of relatively unknown aspects of the controversy over Milton Friedman’s March 1975 visit to Chile through the analytical framework provided by James M. Buchanan’s late 1950s assessment of the economist-physician analogy. The chapter draws upon a range of archival and neglected primary sources to show that the topics which generally rear their head in any contemporary discussion of Friedman’s visit to Chile – for example, whether it is appropriate to provide policy advice to a dictator – were aired in a largely private mid-1970s exchange between Friedman and a number of professional associates. In particular, the controversy over Friedman and Chile began several months before Friedman arrived in Santiago.

We document how inflation expectations evolved in the United States during the fall of 1933 using narrative evidence from historical news accounts and the forecasts of contemporary business analysts. We find that inflation expectations, after rising substantially during the spring of 1933, moderated in the fall in response to mixed messages from the Roosevelt Administration. The narrative accounts and our econometric model connect the dramatic swings in output growth in 1933 – the rapid recovery in the spring and the setback in the fall – to these sudden movements in inflation expectations.

Distribution concerns who gets what. But does “who” refer to the personal distribution of income among individuals or the functional distribution of income among suppliers of productive factors? For nearly 150 years, Anglophone distribution theory followed the Ricardian emphasis on functional distribution – the income shares of labor, land, and capital. Only beginning in the 1960s, and consolidated by a research outpouring in the early 1970s, does mainstream economics turn to the personal conception of distribution. This essay documents Anglophone (primarily American) economics’ move from functional to personal distribution, and tries to illuminate something of its causes and timing.

The versions of positivism that are critically assessed in Bruce Caldwell’s Beyond Positivism bear two dominant sets of implications. One is that knowledge growth is monistic in nature; the other is that science has a specific deductivist structure. Caldwell focuses mainly on the former and its critics. I argue here that the second set of implications always did, and still does, perhaps more than ever, warrant critical attention.

In the first decade of the 21st century, the financial crisis of 2007–2010 stands out as a landmark political, societal, business and economic event. Its impact on the financial sector is evident as seen by the collapse of banks such as Lehman Brothers, the sale of Bear Stearns to JP Morgan Chase and by the full or part nationalisation of others such as Northern Rock, Bradford and Bingley, Lloyds (including Halifax Bank of Scotland which they acquired during the crisis) and RBS. Its scope and breadth of impact has spread beyond the financial sector and has affected the broader economy and society. The North American along with a number of European and other economies fell into recession. The UK economy suffered its longest and deepest recession since the Second World War. Government and central banks announced unprecedented policy responses and initiated measures such as record low interest rates and quantitative easing (the printing of money) to stave off a 1930s style depression. Policies such as the car scrappage scheme introduced by the UK and American governments were designed to reduce inventories, stimulate economic recovery and help re-build confidence. Nevertheless, businesses suffered and a number of them collapsed, for example in the United Kingdom, high street retailers Zavvi, Woolworths and among others Borders ceased trading and were put into administration. The story of the financial and economic crisis has been well documented by, among others, Tett (2010), Roubini and Mihm (2010), and Bishop and Green (2010).