Search Results
Journal Article
Revision of the monetary base
Working Paper
The reform of October 1979: how it happened and why
This study offers a historical review of the monetary policy reform of October 6, 1979, and discusses the influences behind it and its significance. We lay out the record from the start of 1979 through the spring of 1980, relying almost exclusively upon contemporaneous sources, including the recently released transcripts of Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meetings during 1979. We then present and discuss in detail the reasons for the FOMC's adoption of the reform and the communications challenge presented to the Committee during this period. Further, we examine whether the essential ...
Journal Article
Editor's introduction
Working Paper
The remarkable stability of monetary base velocity in the United States, 1919-1999
This analysis examines the long-run demand for the adjusted monetary base in the United States, 1919-1999. When the "price"of the base is measured by the inverse of the yield on long-term, high-quality corporate bonds and an appropriate functional form is selected, the quantity of base money demanded is found to be a stable function "...of a small number of variables."
Working Paper
Results of a study of the stability of cointegrating relations comprised of broad monetary aggregates
There is strong evidence of a stable ?money demand? relationship for MZM and M2 through the 1990s. Though the M2 relationship breaks down somewhere around 1990, evidence has been accumulating that the disturbance is well characterized as a permanent upward shift in M2 velocity that began around 1990 and was largely over by 1994. This paper?s results support the hypothesis that households permanently reallocated a portion of their wealth from time deposits to mutual funds. This reallocation may have been induced by depository restructuring, but it could also be explained by appropriately ...
Journal Article
Monetary aggregates, monetary policy and economic activity
Working Paper
A revised measure of the St. Louis adjusted monetary base
The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis' adjusted monetary base combines in a single index Federal Reserve actions that affect the supply base money -- open market operations, discount window lending and unsterilized foreign exchange market intervention -- with actions that affect depository institutions' demand for base money -- changes in statutory reserve requirements. The adjusted monetary base equals the sum of the monetary base and a reserve adjustment magnitude (RAM) that maps changes in reserve requirements into equivalent changes in the (unadjusted) monetary base. This paper presents a ...
Working Paper
The great inflation: did the shadow know better?
The Shadow Open Market Committee was formed in 1973 in response to rising inflation and the apparent unwillingness of U.S. policymakers to implement policies necessary to maintain price stability. This paper describes how the Committee's policy views differed from those of most Federal Reserve officials and many academic economists at the time. The Shadow argued that price stability should be the primary goal of monetary policy, and favored gradual adjustment of monetary growth to a rate consistent with price stability. The paper evaluates the Shadow's policy rule in the context of the New ...