ABSTRACT
The premise that individuals are capable of maximizing behavior in the markets in which they operate, whether as consumers, producers, savers, investors, workers, and/or employers, is the leitmotif of the tradition that has become associated with the Chicago School of economics. Members of this group of academic economists, who have taught or studied at the University of Chicago or other institutions (among them the University of California at Berkeley, Stanford, and MIT) where they have come under the energizing influence of the Chicago view, share an identifiable intellectual bond. Although their professional association is very loose and they disagree about many specifics, they are, nevertheless, relatively homogeneous with respect to their methodology, philosophy, and policy preferences. Chicago economists are, first and foremost, advocates of an individualistic market economy. Indeed, they are sometimes referred to as “the Chicago school of libertarian economics.”1 It is the degree of this advocacy that sets the Chicagoans apart from other economists, who may also prefer a predominantly market-oriented economy, but who do not necessarily believe that individual liberty (political as well as economic) cannot
exist outside a free enterprise system, or that a free-enterprise system is more productive than any other.2
