President’s Message
A message about the establishment of the Milton Friedman Institute from President Robert J. Zimmer
President Robert J. Zimmer
“The goal of the Institute is to build on the University’s existing leadership position and make the Milton Friedman Institute a primary intellectual destination for economics ... ”
May 14, 2008
I am very pleased to announce the establishment of the Milton Friedman Institute, following the recommendations of a faculty committee and discussions with appropriate faculty bodies. The Institute is designed to reinforce the University of Chicago as the world’s leading intellectual destination for economics and its connections to business, law, and policy.
The Milton Friedman Institute will provide a set of resources that will make it possible to continue recruiting top scholars, at both the junior and senior ranks. It will provide a location for faculty at Chicago to do research in economics and related areas, and to be joined by scholars — senior, junior, postdoctoral, and advanced graduate students — visiting the Institute for varying lengths of time. It is anticipated that many of these scholars will work in subfields in which members of the Chicago faculty do not currently concentrate, and that they will play leading roles in workshops during extended visits.
We also anticipate that this will be a natural locus to further the long-standing connections between those areas in which economic analysis plays a significant role, collaborations that have been a distinctive component of the intellectual fabric of the University: the Department of Economics, Graduate School of Business, Law School, and Harris School.
Milton Friedman’s intellectual fearlessness, commitment to rigorous analysis, and emphasis on the importance of theory and data and their interplay embody the University of Chicago’s scholarship. Friedman, who was the Paul Snowden Russell Distinguished Service Professor in Economics, won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1976 for “his achievements in the fields of consumption analysis, monetary history and theory, and for his demonstration of the complexity of stabilization policy.” His work had a great impact on policy as well as scholarship.
The Milton Friedman Institute will occupy buildings that currently house the Chicago Theological Seminary on the north side of 58th Street between Woodlawn and University. The University’s purchase of this building, which may also house the Department of Economics, will enable the Institute to be centrally located between our main quadrangles and the Harper Center of the Graduate School of Business. The Seminary’s main building (5757 S. University) will be renovated to respect its architectural and historic significance, as well as to create a home appropriate for the Institute and the Department of Economics, should the latter move there as well. As part of the purchase agreement, the University will construct a new home for the Seminary.
The University’s financial commitment to the Institute will be in the range of $200 million, with half of that amount establishing an operating endowment and the remainder allocated for facilities and other start-up costs. The majority of these funds will be raised through donations from alumni and business leaders from around the world. The Institute will be led by a Director and a faculty advisory group, with the search for a Director commencing shortly.
I want to thank the faculty committee that made the compelling recommendation to create the Milton Friedman Institute: Lars Hansen, the Homer J. Livingston Distinguished Service Professor in Economics (chair); Gary Becker, University Professor in Economics and Sociology and the Graduate School of Business; John Cochrane, the Myron S. Scholes Professor of Finance in the Graduate School of Business; James Heckman, the Henry Schultz Distinguished Service Professor in Economics; Robert Lucas Jr., the John Dewey Distinguished Service Professor in Economics; Kevin Murphy, the George J. Stigler Distinguished Service Professor in Economics in the Graduate School of Business; and Eric Posner, the Kirkland & Ellis Professor in the Law School.
President Robert J. Zimmer