The Becker Friedman Institute mourns the passing of Anna Jacobson Schwartz, a remarkable economist and a longtime collaborator of Milton Friedman.

She is best known for coauthoring A Monetary History of the United States, 1867–1960, with Friedman. This monumental and influential work attributed the Great Depression to the Federal Reserve's mismanagement of the money supply. Schwartz wrote or edited nine books on monetary policy, including two more with Friedman.

Her career as a professional economist began in 1920, a year after earning her master's degree at Columbia University. In the 1940s, she began working on a project on monetary data at the National Bureau of Economic Research, leading to her collaboration with Friedman when he joined the NBER in 1948.

She was a highly accomplished scholar in her own right, making signficant and influential contributions in the areas of banking and money, monetary policy and statistics. Her work at NBER spanned seven decades, continuing almost up to the time of her death on June 21, 2012.

She remained an incisive and penetrating economic analyst and commentator on monetary policy until her last days. She leaves us an invaluable body of work and a remarkable example of careful data-driven analysis.