A Monetary History of the United States 1867–1960

work by Friedman and Schwartz

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June 30, 2026

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A Monetary History of the United States, 1867–1960 is a seminal work by Milton Friedman and Anna J. Schwartz that significantly influenced economic thought. This book presents a detailed analysis of the U.S. money supply from the end of the Civil War to 1960.123

The work is a cornerstone of monetarism, a school of economic thought that emphasizes the role of the money supply in determining economic activity. Monetarists, including Friedman, advocate for controlling the growth rate of the money supply as a primary tool for economic stability, proposing a "monetary rule" to guide policy. The book's findings challenged the prevailing Keynesian economic theories of the time, particularly regarding the effectiveness of fiscal policy versus monetary policy.132

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Milton Friedman
Challenging Keynesian economics
Schwartz, A Monetary History of the United States, 1867–1960. Combining theoretical and empirical analysis with institutional insights, that volume provided an intricately detailed account of the role of money in the U.S. economy since the Civil War. Especially influential was the authors’ claim that the Great…
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Schwartz, A Monetary History of the United States, 1867–1960. Combining theoretical and empirical analysis with institutional insights, that volume provided an intricately detailed account of the role of money in the U.S. economy since the Civil War. Especially influential was the authors’ claim that the Great…
Read More

Great Depression
Banking panics and monetary contraction
Schwartz, in the classic study A Monetary History of the United States, 1867–1960 (1963), argued that the death in 1928 of Benjamin Strong, who had been the governor of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York since 1914, was a significant cause of this inaction. Strong had been a forceful…
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Schwartz, in the classic study A Monetary History of the United States, 1867–1960 (1963), argued that the death in 1928 of Benjamin Strong, who had been the governor of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York since 1914, was a significant cause of this inaction. Strong had been a forceful…
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quantity theory of money
…of money and prices—such as A Monetary History of the United States (1963) by Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz—restored much of the quantity theory’s lost prestige. One implication of this theory is that the size of the stock of money must be considered when shaping governmental policies meant to control…
Read More
…of money and prices—such as A Monetary History of the United States (1963) by Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz—restored much of the quantity theory’s lost prestige. One implication of this theory is that the size of the stock of money must be considered when shaping governmental policies meant to control…
Read More