This paper compares the different dynamics of the simple sum monetary aggregates and the Divisia monetary aggregate indexes over time, over the business cycle, and across high and low inflation and interest rate phases. Although traditional comparisons of the series sometimes suggest that simple...

The current financial crisis followed the “great moderation,” according to which the world’s central banks had gotten so good at countercyclical policy that the business cycle no longer existed. As more and more economists and media people became convinced that the risk of recessions had...

This paper comprises a survey of a half century of research on international monetary aggregate data. We argue that since monetary assets began yielding interest, the simple sum monetary aggregates have had no foundations in economic theory and have sequentially produced one source of...

This paper explores the disconnect of Federal Reserve data from index number theory. A consequence could have been the decreased systemic-risk misperceptions that contributed to excess risk taking prior to the housing bust. We find that most recessions in the past 50 years were preceded by more...

An analysis of the impact from stabilizing instruments important to macroeconomic policy on output in the US is presented. A simple approach to identify the influence of macroeconomic-policy instruments, based on the St. Louis equation, is clearly presented and examined using annual US data from...

This working paper presents analysis about long-term trend in economic growth by examining per-capita GDP in Germany for the years 1870-1989. It supports explanation for economic growth by way of a single, deterministic trend in market-centered economies, when holding non-economic features...

This working paper examines monetary aggregates as means of explaining economic activity. Comparative analysis of the Great Depression and the years 2007-11 is used to test the explanatory power of monetary aggregates in accordance with their use in monetarist explanations of the Great...