Recent empirical research found that the strong short-term relationship between monetary aggregates and US real output and inflation, as outlined in the classical study by M. Friedman and Schwartz, mostly disappeared since the early 1980s. In the light of the B. Friedman and Kuttner (1992)...

This paper looks at the history of money and its modern form from a scientific and mathematical point of view. The approach here is to emphasize simplicity. A straightforward model and algebraic formula for a large economy analogous to the ideal gas law of thermodynamics is proposed. It may be...

We describe a class of monetary economies that generate persistent episodes of high and low inflation. In this class of economies, variations in expectations can lead private agents to take actions which then make it optimal for the monetary authority to validate those expectations. We think...

The determinants of money velocity are explored under various assumptions on interest rate uncertainty in a monetary general equilibrium model. It is found that the appearance of velocity function instability can be produced by overlooking interest rate stochastic volatility. In addition, when...

This paper examines the combined influences of detrending and time aggregation on the measurement of business cycles. The approximate band- pass filter of Baxter and King (1999) performs relatively well in the sense that it retains the basic shape of disaggregate spectra and cospectra when...

Mismeasurement of inflation is likely to be more severe in a transition economy than in a more stable environment. Reasonable estimates of the size of the inflationary bias in the Czech Republic suggest that conventionally reported declines in real output and living standards during the...

This paper reports first results from a survey of 404 middle-sized and large manufacturing firms from 40 Russian regions in April-June 2003. We examine the extent of social service and infrastructure provision by the firms and the firms’ assessment of the quality of public infrastructure and...

Accumulating microeconomic evidence points both to firm level adjustment lumpiness and to the significant influence of idiosyncratic disturbances. Do these matter for aggregate fluctuations, or do their effects largely vanish upon aggregation? This paper explores the implications of local...

Compared to its central role in policy discussions in the United States and most other developed countries, the reliability of the measurement of the output gap has attracted relatively little academic study. Furthermore, both the academic literature and the debate among practitioners have...