WASHINGTON, Nov 16: Milton Friedman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist who advocated an unfettered free market and had the ear of Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan, died on Thursday. He was 94.

Friedman died in San Francisco, said Robert Fanger, a spokesman for the Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation in Indianapolis. He did not know the cause of death.

''Milton's passion for freedom and liberty has influenced more lives than he ever could possibly know,'' Gordon St. Angelo, the foundation's president and CEO, said in a statement. ''His writings and ideas have transformed the minds of U.S. presidents, world leaders, entrepreneurs and freshmen economic majors alike.''

In more than a dozen books and in his column in Newsweek magazine, Friedman championed individual freedom in economics and politics.

His theory of monetarism, adopted in part by the Nixon, Ford and Reagan administrations, opposed the traditional Keynesian economics that had dominated U.S. policy since the New Deal. He was a member of Reagan's Economic Policy Advisory Board.

His theories won him a Nobel Prize in economics in 1976. In an interview with Playboy magazine in 1973, later republished in a collection of his essays titled ''Bright Promises, Dismal Performance,'' Friedman said he was encouraged by an apparent trend away from government control.

''There are faint stirrings and hopeful signs,'' he said. ''Even some of the intellectuals who were most strongly drawn to the New Deal in the '30s are rethinking their positions, dabbling just a little with free-market principles. They're moving slowly and taking each step as though they were exploring a virgin continent. But it's not dangerous. Some of us have lived here quite comfortably all along.''

Friedman, whose wit made him a popular guest on radio and television shows, appeared to enjoy arguing with other economists.

In the Playboy interview, he referred to his disagreement with Galbraith, who endorsed wage and price controls. When Nixon went against Friedman's advice and reluctantly imposed the controls in an effort to slow inflation, Friedman said he wrote a note to Galbraith.

''You must be as chagrined as I am to have Nixon for your disciple,'' Friedman wrote. Galbraith did not reply, Friedman said.—AP