Behind the Most Famous Men in Economics There Have
Always Been Women
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/13/opinion/economics-women-goldin-friedman.html
Consumption economics, the study of buying and selling, was at the time something of a backwater in the field, a “female” topic that women economists were often encouraged to study. But thanks to his wife, Rose, a trained economist who did not complete her Ph.D., Mr. Friedman had close ties to several women economists in this field. In a later reminiscence, Mr. Friedman explained that he’d been inspired to write the 1957 book after “a series of fireside conversations at our summer cottage in New Hampshire with my wife and two of our friends, Dorothy S. Brady and Margaret Reid.” All three, he noted, were at the time working on consumption.
Mr. Friedman’s insight about permanent income grew out of Ms. Brady and Ms. Reid’s work on farm families, whose spending could vary wildly from year to year. He generalized their finding, and in so doing revolutionized how economists think about consumption. Although he often cited his collaborators, even calling the book “in essential respects a joint product,” it bore his name alone. Once again, thanks to his scholarly friendships with women, Mr. Friedman was attuned to phenomena that other male economists had neglected.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/13/opinion/economics-women-goldin-friedman.html
Consumption economics, the study of buying and selling, was at the time something of a backwater in the field, a “female” topic that women economists were often encouraged to study. But thanks to his wife, Rose, a trained economist who did not complete her Ph.D., Mr. Friedman had close ties to several women economists in this field. In a later reminiscence, Mr. Friedman explained that he’d been inspired to write the 1957 book after “a series of fireside conversations at our summer cottage in New Hampshire with my wife and two of our friends, Dorothy S. Brady and Margaret Reid.” All three, he noted, were at the time working on consumption.
Mr. Friedman’s insight about permanent income grew out of Ms. Brady and Ms. Reid’s work on farm families, whose spending could vary wildly from year to year. He generalized their finding, and in so doing revolutionized how economists think about consumption. Although he often cited his collaborators, even calling the book “in essential respects a joint product,” it bore his name alone. Once again, thanks to his scholarly friendships with women, Mr. Friedman was attuned to phenomena that other male economists had neglected.