Anna Schwartz | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Schwartz in 2007 | |
| Born | Anna Jacobson (1915-11-11)November 11, 1915 New York City, New York, U.S. |
| Died | June 21, 2012(2012-06-21) (aged 96) Manhattan, New York City, New York, U.S. |
| Spouse(s) | Isaac Schwartz (1936–1999; his death) |
| Relatives | Abraham Halkin (cousin) Simon Halkin (cousin) Leon Gordis (cousin) |
| Academic background | |
| Alma mater | Barnard College Columbia University |
| Influences | Milton Friedman |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline | Monetary economics |
| School or tradition | Chicago school of economics |
| Institutions | National Bureau of Economic Research |
| Notable ideas | Analysis of money Analysis ofbanking |
| Website | |
Anna Jacobson Schwartz (pronounced/ʃwɔːrts/SHWORTS; November 11, 1915 – June 21, 2012) was an Americaneconomist who worked at theNational Bureau of Economic Research in New York City and a writer forThe New York Times.Paul Krugman has said that Schwartz is "one of the world's greatestmonetary scholars."[1]
Schwartz collaborated with Nobel laureateMilton Friedman onA Monetary History of the United States, 1867–1960, which was published in 1963.[2][3][4] This book placed the blame for theGreat Depression at the door of theFederal Reserve System.[5]Robert J. Shiller describes the book as the "most influential account" of the Great Depression.[6] She was also president of theWestern Economic Association International in 1988.[7]
Schwartz was inducted into theNational Women's Hall of Fame in 2013.[8]
Schwartz was born Anna Jacobson on November 11, 1915, in New York City to Pauline (née Shainmark) and Hillel Jacobson.[9] She graduatedPhi Beta Kappa fromBarnard College[10] at 18 and gained her master's degree in economics fromColumbia University in 1935, at 19. She started her career as a professional economist one year later.
In 1936, she married Isaac Schwartz, a financial officer and fellow Columbia University graduate, with whom she raised four children. Her first published paper was in theReview of Economics and Statistics (1940), in which she, along with Arthur Gayer and Isaiah Finkelstein, wroteBritish Share Prices, 1811–1850. She earned herPh.D. from Columbia in 1964.[9]
After briefly working for theU.S. Department of Agriculture (1936) and the Columbia University Social Science Research Council (1936–41); in 1941, she joined the staff of theNational Bureau of Economic Research. She worked in the New York City office of that organization for the rest of her life. When she joined the National Bureau, it was engaged in the study ofbusiness cycles. In 1981 her role as the staff director of the U.S. Gold Commission brought her public recognition. Even after a broken hip and stroke in 2009, Schwartz remained an astute and thorough researcher. She was named a distinguished fellow of the American Economic Association (1993) and a fellow of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences (2007).
Though she held teaching positions for only a short part of her career, she developed younger scholars by her willingness to work with them and to share her approach (a scrupulous examination of the past) to understand history better and to draw lessons for the present.
In collaboration with Arthur Gayer andWalt Whitman Rostow, she produced the monumentalThe Growth and Fluctuation of the British Economy, 1790–1850: An Historical, Statistical, and Theoretical Study of Britain's Economic Development. It appeared in two volumes in 1953, having been delayed by theSecond World War for a decade after it was completed. It is still highly regarded among economic scholars of the period.[11] It was reprinted in 1975.
Gayer had died before the book's first appearance, but two other authors wrote a new introduction, which reviewed literature on the subject that had published since the original publication date. They admitted that there had developed what they called an "amicable divergence of view" about the interpretation of some of the facts that were set out in the book. In particular, Schwartz indicated that she had, in the light of recent theoretical and empirical research, revised her view of the importance ofmonetary policy and her interpretation ofinterest rate movements.
Years before her first book was reprinted, another economist had joined what might be called the Schwartz team of co-authors. Prompted byArthur F. Burns, then atColumbia University and theNational Bureau who would subsequently be Chairman of the U.S.Federal Reserve System, she andMilton Friedman teamed up to examine the role of money in thebusiness cycle. Their first publication wasA Monetary History of the United States, 1867–1960, which hypothesized that changes inmonetary policy have had large effects on theeconomy, and it laid a large portion of the blame for theGreat Depression at the door of theFederal Reserve System.[12]
The book was published in 1963, along with the equally famous article, "Money and Business Cycles", which as with her first paper was published in theReview of Economics and Statistics. They also wrote the booksMonetary Statistics of the United States (1970) andMonetary Trends in the United States and the United Kingdom: Their Relation to Income, Prices, and Interest Rates, 1867–1975 (1982).[13]
TheDepression-related chapter ofA Monetary History was titled "The Great Contraction" and was republished as a separate book in 1965. Some editions include an appendix[14] in which the authors got an endorsement from an unlikely source at an event in their honor whenBen Bernanke made this statement:
"Let me end my talk by abusing slightly my status as an official representative of the Federal Reserve. I would like to say to Milton and Anna: Regarding the Great Depression, you're right. We did it. We're very sorry. But thanks to you, we won't do it again."[15][16]
She changed her opinion onfinancial regulation. Economists, bankers, and policymakers have long been concerned with the stability of the financial system. In a series of studies in the 1970s and 1980s, Schwartz emphasized that price level stability is essential forfinancial system stability.
Drawing on evidence from over two centuries, she demonstrated that business failures do not have major consequences for the economy if their effects are prevented from spreading through the financial system. Individual institutions should also be allowed to fail, not supported with taxpayers' money. In 1981, she gained public recognition for her role as staff director of the U.S. Gold Commission.[17]
There have been other areas of her work including the international transmission ofinflation and ofbusiness cycles, the role of government inmonetary policy, measuring the output of banks, and the behavior ofinterest rates, ondeflation, onmonetary standards. In an interview with Barrons in 2008, Schwartz said interventions such as injecting liquidity into markets and reacting to the credit crisis with ad hoc programs were not the answer. She has also done work outside of the United States. Some years ago, the Department of Banking and Finance atCity University, London, England, started a research project on the monetary history of the United Kingdom. For many years, she was an adviser to that project. She commented on papers, suggested lines of approach, came and spoke to students and at academic conferences where the work was discussed.
From 2002 to 2003, she served as president of the International Atlantic Economic Society.[18] She was elected a Fellow of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2007.[19] After 2007, she concentrated her efforts on researching U.S. officialintervention in the foreign exchange market using Federal Reserve data from 1962.
She continued commenting on economic affairs until the2008 financial crisis, and criticized the government's response to it, such asBen Bernanke's support for bailouts and persistently-low interest rates.[20][21] She also addressed a critique of Friedman by Krugman.[22] In addition, she wrote 9 books in her career, and published over 100 academic articles or comments.[23]
She died on June 21, 2012, in her home inManhattan, New York, aged 96. Her husband Isaac predeceased her in 1999; they had been married for over 60 years. She was survived by four children (Jonathan, Joel, Naomi Pasachoff and Paula Berggren) as well as seven grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.[24]
Her son-in-law was astronomerJay Pasachoff.[25]
