A Monetary History of the United States 1867-1960

<p>Writing in the June 1965 issue of the<i>Economic Journal</i> Harry G. Johnson begins with a sentence seemingly calibrated to the scale of the book he set himself to review: The long-awaited monetary history of the United States by Friedman and Schwartz is in every sense of the term a monumental scholarly achievement--monumental in its sheer bulk monumental in the definitiveness of its treatment of innumerable issues large and small . . . monumental above all in the theoretical and statistical effort and ingenuity that have been brought to bear on the solution of complex and subtle economic issues.<br><br><br> Friedman and Schwartz marshaled massive historical data and sharp analytics to support the claim that monetary policy--steady control of the money supply--matters profoundly in the management of the nation's economy especially in navigating serious economic fluctuations. In their influential chapter 7 <i>The Great Contraction</i>--which Princeton published in 1965 as a separate paperback--they address the central economic event of the century the Depression. According to Hugh Rockoff writing in January 1965: If Great Depressions could be prevented through timely actions by the monetary authority (or by a monetary rule) as Friedman and Schwartz had contended then the case for market economies was measurably stronger.<br><br><br> Milton Friedman won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1976 for work related to <i>A Monetary History</i> as well as to his other Princeton University Press book <i>A Theory of the Consumption Function</i> (1957).</p>