Economist Milton Friedman dead at 94

Economist Milton Friedman dead at 94

Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal - 10:49 am.PST, Thursday

Leading economist and Nobel prize winner Milton Friedman died Thursday. He was 94.

The Wall Street Journal said Friedman was taken to a hospital near his San Francisco home, where he was pronounced dead of heart failure.

Friedman, who was awarded the 1976 Nobel prize, was a longtime advocate of political and economic freedom and a senior research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution since 1977.

He was awarded both the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the National Medal of Science, and is regarded as the leader of the Chicago School of monetary economics, which focuses on quantity of money as a government policy instrument and a determining factor in business cycles and inflation.

Friedman also wrote extensively on public policy. Often with his wife, Rose D. Friedman, he authored Capitalism and Freedom (University of Chicago Press, 1962); Bright Promises, Dismal Performance (Thomas Horton and Daughters, 1983); Free to Choose (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980); and Tyranny of the Status Quo (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1984).

His other books included A Theory of the Consumption Function, The Optimum Quantity of Money and Other Essays, and (with A. J. Schwartz) A Monetary History of the United States, Monetary Statistics of the United States, and Monetary Trends in the United States and the United Kingdom.

He was a member of President Ronald Reagan's Economic Policy Advisory Board and served as an adviser to Senator Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon.

Friedman received a B.A. in 1932 from Rutgers University, an M.A. in 1933 from the University of Chicago, and a Ph.D. in 1946 from Columbia University.