Anna Schwartz (96) falleció el pasasdo jueves en Manhattan. Schwartz, junto a Milton Friedman, ha dejado grandes contribuciones a la economía; especialmente en economía histórica y monetaria. Su trabajo en conjunto sobre la Gran Depresión, “A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960” es un clásico de lectura obligada indistintamente se esté o no de acuerdo con sus autores. Friedman ha comentado que si bien él recibió el reconocimiento por este trabajo, fue Schwartz quien realizó la mayoría del trabajo.
Schwartz no sólo tuvo una carrera muy productiva y de influencia, siendo una de las economistas más respetadas de su época, sino que fue una persona de incesante trabajo, dedicando su tiempo a la economía incluso en su avanzada edad. Recientemente, Schwartz ha comentado sobre la crisis financiera del 2008 así como responder con contundencia y altura a las críticas que recientemente Krugman hiciese a Milton Friedman. Schwartz ha dejado proyectos de investigación inconclusos, lo que muestra su pasón por la economía. Junto al fallecimiento de Elinor Ostrom, la disciplina pierde dos figuras que han hecho de la economía una mejor disciplina.
A continuación comparto algunos links que comentan la vida y obra de Anna Schwartz.
- The Beacon (Bob Higgs): Anna Jacobson Schwartz (November 11, 1915 – June 21, 2012).
- The New York Times (Robert D. Hershey Jr.): Anna Schwartz, Economist Who Collaborated With Milton Friedman, Dies at 96.
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Forbes (Tim Ferguson): Anna Scwartz, Monetary Historian, RIP.
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Bloomberg (Steve Matthews): Anna Schwartz, Economist Friedman’s Co-Author, Dies at 96.
- Free Banking (George Selgin): Anna.
Punto de Vista Economico 
Dice Larry White: «This is a sad day. I had the great fortune to have an office at NYU in the 1980s one floor below Anna’s NBER office, and she was always happy to talk monetary economics. I suspect that she is the reason why Friedman and Schwartz’s 1986 JME is so much more free-banking-friendly than Friedman’s 1960 Framework.»
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George Selgin sobre Anna Schwartz en su blog sobre Free banking.
Anna:
She was one of my intellectual heroes, Anna was–together with Milton and
Leland, David Laidler, Sir Alan Walters, and Dick Timberlake. Old monetarists
all, come to think of it. Now only three are left; and, no, they do not make
them like that any more.
I met Anna at NYU. Back then the NBER occupied the 8th floor of 269 Mercer
Street. NYU’s economics department was on the 7th floor. Of course I went to
meet her. She turned out to be very nice, so I got the bright idea to ask her
to serve as an external member of my dissertation committee. I had the
impression that I was one of very few NY Ph.D. candidates to think of doing
that, which struck me as odd. But then a lot of things about NYU, and about the
economics business generally, struck me (and still strike me) as odd.
Anna gave me some good advice; indeed, apart from Larry White (who was my
supervisor, and who I talked to almost daily) she was my most helpful adviser at
NYU. Naturally I don’t remember much about the particular advice she gave me.
But I do distinctly remember her telling me that, once I got into the business,
I had better write about stuff besides free banking if wanted to survive. I
took Anna’s advice, and still found it rough going. Had I not listened to her
I’m sure I would have had to give up.
I’m also pretty sure that it was only thanks to Anna that some of the the free
banking stuff that did make it into the better journals got through: she was one
of the few persons who was both greatly respected by the editors of those
journals and willing to give the free bankers a hearing. Indeed, Anna was more
than sympathetic: she was, or she became, one of us. I am reasonably certain
that she played a very large, if not crucial, part in encouraging Milton to
revise his thinking on the topic, as he did when he and Anna published their
1986 JME paper «Has Government Any Role in Money?» . That Anna’s views on the
proper scope of government interference in banking became progressively more
radical I have no doubt. For example, while in a 1995 Cato Journal article she
and Mike Bordo took the conventional line that you couldn’t have a stable
banking system without some sort of deposit insurance, when I questioned her
about this stand a few years ago Anna claimed that she had since rejected that
view, having come to believe instead that the moral hazard arising from deposit
guarantees ultimately caused such guarantees to do more harm than good.
I was lucky to be able to talk to Anna at length on several occasions during the
last few years, thanks to Walker Todd, who arranged for her to visit the
American Institute for Economic Research while I was there as a summer fellow.
What I remember most about those conversations was how very candid and
uncompromising they were: Anna never held a punch, and when she threw one, it
landed square on target. Not that Anna wasn’t generous with praise: it’s just
that, whatever she thought, she always came right out with it. She’d lived long
enough, I suppose, to earn that. In any event it meant that talking to her was
really a blast. (If only I could repeat all that I heard!)
Now, with all the dominoes lined-up from Greece to Brussels and beyond, and
ready to start toppling at any moment, how I wish that this tough and
uncompromising monetarist was still among us! No one can say just what she’d
have made of it all; but whatever she made you can bet she would have served it
up straight.
Post completo: http://www.freebanking.org/2012/06/23/anna/
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