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Lloyd Wynn Mints (1888–1989) was an American economist, notable for his contributions to the quantity theory of money.

Biography

Born in South Dakota, Lloyd Mints moved with his family in 1888 to Missouri and then in 1901 to Boulder, Colorado. He received from the University of Colorado his bachelor's degree in 1914 and master's degree in 1915. He was a secondary school teacher in Cripple Creek, Colorado from 1915 to 1917 and then moved to Washington, D.C. as an analyst in a federal office. In 1918 he was transferred to Chicago. In 1919 Mints enrolled as a graduate student at the University of Chicago, where he was assigned to teach undergraduate courses. He completed several graduate courses in economics and was promoted to assistant professor of political economy in 1923. He taught introductory economics courses until 1928 when he was put in charge of teaching money and banking courses. He retired as professor emeritus in 1953.

The trio of Mints, Simons and Knight form the core of what many refer to as the 'Chicago School' of the 1930s and early 1940s. ... Mints provided a reformulation of the quantity theory which could stand against both the mainstream of the American economists over the first three decades of the twentieth century and the emerging Keynesianism of the late 1930s and 1940s.

Mints was an advocate of the view that the Federal Reserve System should have increased the quantity of money during the years from 1929 to 1933. Mints was also a main critic of the real bills doctrine in the 20th century.

Mints had a strong influence on development of Chicago monetary economics, in particular on Milton Friedman's thinking.

Selected publications

Articles

• Mints, Lloyd, "The Elasticity of Banknotes," Journal of Political Economy, 38, August 1920, pp. 458–71.
• Mints, Lloyd, "Open Market Borrowing to Finance the Production of Goods Sold for Future Delivery," Journal of Political Economy, 31, February 1923, pp. 128–38.
• Mints, Lloyd, "Expansion of Fixed and Working Capital by Open Market Borrowing," Journal of Political Economy, 31, April 1923, pp. 299–302.
• Mints, Lloyd, "Monetary Policy," Review of Economics and Statistics, 28, May 1946, pp. 60–69.
• Mints, Lloyd, "Monetary Policy and Stabilization," American Economic Review (Supplement), 41, May 1951, pp. 188–193.
• Mints, Lloyd and others, "Monetary Policy: Discussion," American Economic Review (Supplement), 43, May 1953, pp. 54–60.

Books

• Lloyd Wynn Mints (1945). A History of Banking Theory in Great Britain and the United States. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 9780226530475. OCLC 249858.
• Lloyd Wynn Mints (1950). Monetary Policy for a Competitive Society. McGraw-Hill. OCLC 610788.

References

1. ^ Emmett, Ross B., ed. (2004). "Introduction". The Chicago Tradition in Economics, 1892–1947. Vol. 8. Taylor & Francis. p. xii. ISBN 9780415254304.
2. Peterson, Rodney D.; Phillips, Ronnie J. (1991). "In memoriam: Lloyd W. Mints, 1888–1989: Pioneer Monetary Economist". The American Economist. 35 (1): 79–81. doi:10.1177/056943459103500111. S2CID 156094022.
3. Cord, Robert A.; Hammond, J. Daniel, eds. (2016). Milton Friedman: Contributions to Economics and Public Policy. Oxford University Press. p. 206. ISBN 9780191009426.
4. Mints, Lloyd W. (1945). A History of Banking Theory in Great Britain and the United States (Fourth impression 1965 ed.). Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press. p. Preface. Monetary theory is a matter of paramount importance in a free-market economy, but, to the present time, banking legislation has been too much controlled, in the United States at any rate, by the belief that a restriction of the banks to the making of loans for bona fide commercial purposes will automatically provide for all needed variations in the means of payment. This belief, which I have called the "real-bills doctrine,"" is utterly subversive of any rational attack on the problem of monetary policy. If there is a central theme in what I have written, it is unsound in all its aspects.
5. "The Dog that Didn't Bark: The Curious Case of Lloyd Mints, Milton Friedman and the Emergence of Monetarism". cepr.org. 13 July 2019. Retrieved 2019-08-30.

• 1888 births
• 1989 deaths
• 20th-century American economists
• University of Colorado alumni
• University of Chicago faculty
• Chicago School economists
• American men centenarians