The prevalent view in the early 1960s was that monetary forces played a passive role in the economic contraction of the 1930s. It presents what was then a contrarian view of the role of monetary policy in the Great Depression. economy from the Civil War Reconstruction Era to the middle of the 20th century. The book discusses the role of the monetary policy in the U.S. The Depression-related chapter, ' The Great Contraction,' was republished as a separate book in 1965. They began work in the late 1940s and eventually published A Monetary History through Princeton University Press in 1963. Schwartz was already gathering much of the relevant historical data at that point, while Friedman was already a professor at the University of Chicago and also at the NBER. Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz were working at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) when the future chairman of the Federal Reserve, Arthur Burns, suggested that they collaborate on a project to analyze the effect of the money supply on the business cycle.

The chapter dealing with the causes of the Great Depression was published as a stand-alone book titled The Great Contraction, 1929–1933.

Orthodox economic historians see it as one of the most influential economics books of the century. The implication they draw is that changes in the money supply had unintended adverse effects, and that sound monetary policy is necessary for economic stability. economy, especially the behavior of economic fluctuations. It uses historical time series and economic analysis to argue the then-novel proposition that changes in the money supply profoundly influenced the U.S.

A Monetary History of the United States, 1867–1960 is a book written in 1963 by Nobel Prize–winning economist Milton Friedman and Anna J.

Milton friedman 1962