Profile Major Works Resources

Anna Jacobson Schwartz, 1915-2012

Photo of A.J. Shwartz (from Elsevier)

Monetarist economic historian. 

Anna J. Schwartz is perhaps most famous for her monumental 1963 study A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960 with Milton Friedman.

Like Friedman, Schwartz was educated at Columbia during its Institutionalist heydey under Wesley C. Mitchell.  She received her M.A. in 1936, and after a stint at the SSRC working on the history of British business cycles with A.A. Gayer and W.W. Rostow, Schwartz went on to join Mitchell's NBER as a researcher in 1941, where she remained for the rest of her career.  She only finally got around to receiving her Ph.D from Columbia in 1964. 

Anna J. Schwartz began her collaboration on American business cycles with Milton Friedman in the 1950s, producing three major works (1963, 1970, 1982).  Friedman and Schwartz's work claimed to prove that business cycles were primarily driven by fluctuations in the money supply,  setting up the empirical groundwork for the Monetarist counter-revolution.  Although criticized for relying on an empiricist Institutionalist approach to the data, rather than deploying modern econometric theory, it was nonetheless one of the most influential empirical works in the 20th Century.

 

  

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Major works of Anna J. Schwartz

  • "British Share Prices, 1811-1859", 1940, REStat
  • "The Beginning of Competitive Banking in Philadelphia, 1782-1809.", 1947, JPE
  • "An Attempt at a Synthesis in American Banking History", 1947, JEH
  • Growth and Fluctuation of the British Economy, 1790-1850, with A.D. Gayer and W.W. Rostow, 1953.
  • A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960, with Milton Friedman, 1963.
  • "Money and Business Cycles", with Milton Friedman, 1963, REStat.
  • The Great Contraction, 1929-33, with Milton Friedman,  1965 [nber]
  • "The Definition of Money" with M. Friedman, 1969, JMCB
  • "Why Money Matters", 1969, Lloyds BR
  • Monetary Statistics of the United States, with Milton Friedman, 1970. [nber]
  • "Secular Price Change in Historical Perspective", 1973, JMCB
  • "How Feasible is Flexible Monetary Policy?", 1975, in Selden, editor, Capitalism and Freedom
  • "Has the Growth of Money Substitutes Hindered Monetary Policy?", with P. Cagan, 1975, JMCB.
  • "Monetary Trends in the United States and the United Kingdom, 1878-1970", 1975, JEH
  • "Issues in Monetary Economics and their Impact on Research in Economic History", 1977, in Gallman, editor, Research in Economic History
  • "Policies for Research in Monetary Economics", 1977, in M. Perlman, editor, The Organization and Retrieval of Economic Knowledge.
  • "The Banking Reforms of the 1930s", 1979, in Walton, editor, Regulatory Change in an Atmosphere of Crisis
  • "Clark Warburton: Pioneer Monetarist", with M>D. Bordo, 1979, JME
  • "Money and Prices in the Nineteenth Century: An old debate rejoined", with M.D. Bordo, 1980, JEH
  • "Understanding 1929-1933", 1981, in K. Brunner, editor, Great Depression Revisited
  • A Century of British Market Interest Rates, 1874-1975., 1981.
  • "Money and Prices in the Eighteenth Century: Was Thomas Tooke right?", with M.D. Bordo, 1981, Explorations in Economic History.
  • "The Effect of the Term Structure of Interest Rates on the Demand for Money in the United States", 1982, with M. Friedman, 1982, JME
  • "Interrelations between the United States and the United Kingdom, 1873-1975.", with M. Friedman, 1982, J Int Money and Finance
  • Monetary Trends in the United States and the United Kingdom, 1982, with M. Friedman. [nber]
  • "Reflections on the Gold Commission Report", 1982, JMCB
  • "International Debt, Insolvency and Illiquidity", with K. Brunner, 1983, J of Economic Affairs
  • "The Importance of Stable Money: Theory and Evidence", with M.D. Bordo, 1983, Cato Journal
  • The International Transmission of Inflation, with M.R. Darby et al., 1983. [nber]
  • A Retrospective on the Classical Gold Standard, 1821-1931 with M.D. Bordo, 1984. [nber]
  • "International Lending and the Economic Environment", 1984, Cato Journal.
  • "Real and Pseudo-Financial Crises", 1986, in Wood, editor, Financial Crises and World Banking Policy.
  • "Has Government Any Role in Money?",  with M. Friedman, 1986, JME
  • "Alternative Monetary Regimes: The Gold Standard", 1986, in Campbell and Dougan, editors, Alternative Monetary Regimes
  • "The Failure of the Bank of United States: A re-appraisal", with M. Friedman, 1986, Explorations in Economic History
  • "The Behavior of Money Stock under Interest Rate Control: Evidence for Canada", with M.D. Bordo and E.U. Choudhri, 1987, JMCB
  • Money in Historical Perspective, 1987. [nber]
  • "Bank Runs and Deposit Insurance Reform", 1988, Cato Journal
  • "Transmission of Real and Monetary Disturbances under Fixed versus Floating Rates", with M.D. Bordo, 1990, Cato Journal
  • "International Debts: What's fact and what's fiction", 1990, Economic Inquiry.
  • "The Performance and Stability of Banking Systems under "Self-Regulation": Theory and Evidence" with M.D. Bordo, 1995, Cato Journal
  • "International Financial Crises: Myths and reality", 1998, Cato Journal
HET

 
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Resources on Anna J. Schwartz

 

 
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