Money Demand in theEuroArea: Do National Differences Matter?

This paper assesses the relevance of national information in estimating the demand for euro-area M3 from three perspectives. First, we check whether national money demands can legitimately be aggregated. Second, we compare time-series and panel methods to estimate aggregate long-run coefficients. Finally, we investigate the differences among national money demands. We find that the hypothesis of perfect aggregation is not rejected. Nevertheless, some estimates of area-wide long-run parameters are sensitive to the method used to combine national information. The main difference among individual countries’ money demands is their interest elasticity.