Free-market economist Milton Friedman dies at 94

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov 17 (Reuters) Milton Friedman, one of the most influential economists of the past century and a champion of free markets, died yesterday morning of heart failure at age 94, a family spokeswoman said.

The winner of the 1976 Nobel Prize for economics, Friedman preached free enterprise in the face of government regulation and advocated a monetary policy involving steady growth in money supply, ideas that played pivotal roles in the governing philosophies of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and former US President Ronald Reagan.

''Milton Friedman revived the economics of liberty, when it had been all but forgotten,'' Thatcher said in a statement. ''He was an intellectual freedom fighter. Never was there a less dismal practitioner of 'the dismal science' (economics).'' US President George W Bush said Friedman ''helped advance human dignity and human freedom.'' ''His work demonstrated that free markets are the great engines of economic development,'' Bush said in a statement from Singapore where he is on a weeklong Asia trip. ''His writings laid the groundwork that transformed many of the world's central banks, helping deliver economic stability and improved living standards in countries around the world.'' ''If you had to ask people across the world to name an economist, by far his name would be the most common,'' Gary Becker, who won the 1992 Nobel Prize for economics, told Reuters. ''He could express the most complicated economic ideas in the most simple language.'' Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said in a statement the ''direct and indirect influences of his thinking on contemporary monetary economics would be difficult to overstate. Just as important, in his humane and engaging way, Milton conveyed to millions an understanding of the economic benefits of free, competitive markets, as well as the close connection that economic freedoms bear to other types of liberty.'' Former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan added: ''He had been a fixture in my life both professionally and personally for a half century. My world will not be the same.'' MORE REUTERS PDM KP2120