This paper was written as the first draft of the invited Foreword for the book, Money and the Economy, by Apostolos Serletis. The paper provides a critical view of those areas in which methodology in economics deviates from that in the physical sciences, provides examples and illustrations of...

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...

This paper is the basis for the Guest Columnist article in the Tuesday, November 11, 2008 issue of the Kansas City Star newspaper's Business Weekly. Because of space limitations, the published newspaper column had to be shortened from the original and unfortunately did not include either of the...

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...

W. A. Barnett originated the Divisia monetary aggregates, using Diewert's results on superlative index numbers and Barnett's derivation of the user cost of monetary asset services. The resulting Divisia index can be interpreted as a first moment aggregating over growth rates with expenditure...