This paper is second of two from the Monetary Services Indices (MSI) Project at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. The first paper, Working Paper 96-007B, surveys the microeconomic theory of the aggregation of monetary assets. This paper describe a new database of monetary services indices...

Actual policy decisions are made in real time and are not irrevocable. These observations are mundane, but most policy modeling has neglected them. We show that when policy is made in an environment of uncertainty, costs of switching policies give the option to wait positive value. This insight...

Presentation at St. Louis University, St. Louis - Feb. 24, 2000

This paper provides the most fully comprehensive evidence to date on whether or not monetary aggregates are valuable for forecasting US inflation in the early to mid 2000s. We explore a wide range of different definitions of money, including different methods of aggregation and different...

Presentation at St. Louis University, St. Louis - Feb. 24, 2000

This paper offers a methodological contribution to monetary theory. First, it presents a model economy with cash-in-advance constraints, following the work of Lucas in the early 80’s; then, it specializes the model to preferences and shocks assumed in the Lagos and Wright (2005) framework....

We study the effects of money (anticipated inflation) on capital formation. Previous papers on this topic adopt reduced-form approaches, putting money in the utility function or imposing cash in advance, but use otherwise frictionless models. We follow a literature that is more explicit about...

This paper includes revised and extended versions of tables of historical .S. currency and monetary aggregates data compiled for the forthcoming work: Susan B. Carter et.al., editors, Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to the Present, Millennial Edition. Three volumes....