I was sad to hear that Allan Meltzer passed away today, at the age of 89. I always thought of him as one of the leaders of monetarism, along with Milton Friedman, Anna Schwartz and Karl Brunner (with whom he frequently collaborated on research.) Unfortunately I didn’t meet Allan until he was in his 80s, but he was still quite energetic and passionate about both monetary economics and classical liberalism more broadly. As recently as last year he participated in the Mercatus colloquium on the effect of low interest rates, and also spoke at one of our events.
My views on monetary policy were shaped by many different influences, but none more important that the monetarist revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, in which Meltzer played a key role. He also wrote a very interesting book on Keynes, whom he argues has been widely misunderstood.
Although market monetarism is somewhat different from traditional monetarism, in my view we are carrying the torch forward, with updates that are very much in the monetarist tradition (i.e., the view that markets are more efficient than bureaucrats.) I would hope that future monetarists improve upon some of our ideas.
I met Meltzer at 3 or 4 conferences over the past 8 years, and he was always very nice to me. I’ll miss him.