The inflation rate last year 8% that we paid more at the gas pump, that we paid

more at the grocery store. It ate away at our savings. And inflation is still

with us now running at about six between six and seven percent as we shoot this

show. Where does inflation come from? And what can we do about it? Economist John

Cochran on Uncommon Knowledge Now.

Welcome to Uncommon Knowledge. I'm Peter Robinson. With an undergraduate degree

in physics from MIT and a doctorate in economics from the University of

California at Berkeley, John Cochran served on the staff of the Council of

Economic Advisors in the Reagan White House. Dr. Cochran then began his

academic career proper, joining the storied economics department at the

University of Chicago, and then the faculty of the Booth Business School also at

Chicago. For some seven years now, Dr. Cochran has been a fellow here at the

Hoover Institution at Stanford. Now John Cochran has published his

Magnum Opus, the fiscal theory of the price level. The fiscal theory

contains a lot of equations. Fear not, John writes in the introduction one

really doesn't need any more economics or math than is covered in a good

undergraduate economics course to understand this to understand it all. We're

about to put that to the test. John, welcome. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be

here. All right, your new book, couple of quotations, Milton Friedman in 1963.

Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon in the sense that it

is and can be produced only by a more rapid increase in the quantity of money

than an output closed quote. John Cochran, in the fiscal theory of the

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