The Stock of Money and Why You Should Care

Kelly, Logan J (2008): The Stock of Money and Why You Should Care.

Abstract

In this paper, I will examine the problems created by incorrectly using a simple sum monetary aggregate to measure the monetary stock. Specifically, I will show that simple sum monetary aggregate confounds the current stock of money with the investment stock of money and that this confounding leads the simple sum monetary aggregate to report an artificially smooth monetary stock. This smoothing causes important information about the dynamic movements of the monetary stock to be lost. This may offer at least a partial explanation of why so many studies find that money has little economic relevance. To that end, we will conclude the paper by examining a reduced form backward looking IS equation to determine whether monetary aggregates contain information about real GDP gap. This paper differs from previous work in that it focuses on smoothing of the monetary stock data caused by the use of simple sum methodology, where the previous work focuses on the bias exhibited by simple sum monetary aggregates.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: Monetary Aggregation, Money Stock, Currency Equivalent Index
• Subjects: C - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods > C4 - Econometric and Statistical Methods: Special Topics > C43 - Index Numbers and Aggregation; E - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics > E4 - Money and Interest Rates > E49 - Other; E - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics > E4 - Money and Interest Rates > E47 - Forecasting and Simulation: Models and Applications

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