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Anna Schwartz, RIP

3 comentarios Publicado por en junio 22, 2012

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.

Update
  • Free Banking (George Selgin): Anna.
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Comentario

3 Respuestas a Anna Schwartz, RIP

  1. Adrián Ravier junio 22, 2012 en 4:47 PM

    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.”

  2. Adrián Ravier junio 23, 2012 en 3:55 PM

    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/

  3. Pingback:Vincent Ostrom (1919-2012), RIP « Punto de Vista Economico

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