Robert L. Hetzel

Robert L. Hetzel is a retired economist from the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. He received an AB and a PhD from the University of Chicago. While at Chicago, he was in the Money and Banking workshop and did his thesis work under Milton Friedman. He joined the research department at the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond in 1975, where, as senior economist and research advisor, he counseled the bank’s president on matters concerning his participation in meetings of the Federal Open Market Committee. His research agenda is the evolution of central banking in the modern regime of fiat money. He regularly writes articles on monetary policy in which he continues the Friedman monetarist tradition. His two recent books, both published by Cambridge University Press, are The Monetary Policy of the Federal Reserve: A History (2008) and The Great Recession: Market Failure or Policy Failure? (2012). Robert Hetzel is currently working on a book entitled Milton Friedman and the Great Debates over the Monetary Standard.