Nobel Prize winner Milton Friedman, one of the most influential economists of the last century and a free-market champion, died today. He was 94.

Mr. Friedman was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1976. He long championed the cause of political and economic freedom and the links between the two. He originated, or was associated with, many breakthroughs in economics since the 1950s. He is best known for explaining the role of the money supply in economic and inflation fluctuations. He also developed, with this year's Nobel Prize winner in economics, Edmund Phelps, the theory in the 1960s that policy makers couldn't achieve a permanent tradeoff between lower unemployment and higher inflation, and that efforts to do so would simply result in the same unemployment rate and higher inflation, a view that holds sway at major central banks today, including the Fed.

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