The Contribution of a Monetary History of the United States

This paper assesses the role of Friedman and Schwartz's "A Monetary History of the United Slates: 1867 to 1960" as a progenitor of research in monetary history. The paper critically surveys the literature on three major themes in the book: monetary disturbances; the domestic monetary framework and monetary policy: and monetary standards. The book's unique portrayal of the historical circumstances of monetary disturbances and of alternative institutional arrangements serves as the closest thing to a laboratory experiment for the monetary economist. Historical study has become an important tool of modern macroeconomic research.