Does Friedman’s k-percent rule guarantee a unique equilibrium outcome? We show analytically the answer to this question is sensitive to the method of aggregation. Focusing on broad measures of money, we show that fixing the growth rate of the true monetary aggregate will generate a unique...

This paper analyzes optimal monetary policy in a standard New-Keynesian model augmented with a financial sector. The banks in the model are subject to shocks which impede their ability and willingness to produce financial assets. We show these financial market supply shocks decrease both the...

While credit cards provide transaction services, as do currency and demand deposits, credit cards have never been included in measures of the money supply. The reason is accounting conventions, which do not permit adding liabilities, such as credit card balances, to assets, such as money. But...

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...

In aggregation theory, the admissibility condition for clustering together components to be aggregated is blockwise weak separability, which also is the condition needed to separate out sectors of the economy. Although weak separability is thereby of central importance in aggregation and index...

This short paper is the encyclopedia entry on Supply of Money to appear in the second edition of the International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. The encyclopedia is edited by William A. Darity and forthcoming from Macmillan Reference USA (Thomson Gale).

Modern aggregation theory and index number theory were introduced into monetary economics by Barnett (1980). The widely used Divisia monetary aggregates were based upon that paper. A key result upon which the rest of the theory depended was Barnett¡¯s derivation of the user-cost price of...

We measure the United States capital stock of money implied by the Divisia monetary aggregate service flow, in a manner consistent with the present-value model of economic capital stock and asset pricing theory. The resulting measures differ substantially from the usual simple sum accounting...

The following highly-cited research monograph, although widely available in libraries, is now out of print: William A. Barnett, Consumer Demand and Labor Supply, North Holland, Amsterdam, 1981. In case you do not have access to the printed book, I have scanned it and put it online below. Since...

This short paper is the encyclopedia entry on Divisia Monetary Indexes to appear in the second edition of the International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. The encyclopedia is edited by William A. Darity and forthcoming from Macmillan Reference USA (Thomson Gale).