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American Economic Review Vol. 103 No. 3 2013

Not Just the Great Contraction: Friedman and Schwartz's A Monetary History of the United States 1867 to 1960

Michael D. Bordo; Hugh Rockoff

Department of Economics, Rutgers University, 75 Hamilton Street, New Brunswick, NJ 08901.

Abstract

Milton Friedman and Anna J. Schwartz published A Monetary History of the United States: 1867 to 1960 with Princeton University Press in 1963, to critical acclaim. Since then the book's reputation has grown and it clearly has become one of the most influential volumes in economics in the twentieth century. In this paper we document the extraordinary impact of A Monetary History and argue that the key to this success was the use of the "narrative approach" to the problem of identifying the effects of monetary policy on economic activity.

DOI
10.1257/aer.103.3.61
Volume
103
Issue
3
Pages
61-65
Language
en
Sources
bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref

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