This article provides an overview of the conference "Science and Cents: Exploring the Economics of Biotechnology," hosted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas in April 2002. The conference brought together distinguished experts who spoke about economic and scientific issues surrounding...

This article by John Duca discusses how shifts in technology, transactions, and asset preferences can weaken the relationships between monetary aggregates, the opportunity cost of money, and nominal output. Observed shifts in these general relationships are shown to be consistent with plausible...

Since the third quarter of 1990, the growth of M2 in the United States has been weaker than econometric models predicted. John V. Duca assesses whether this shortfall in M2 growth is associated with inflows into bond and equity mutual funds or the thrift resolution process. ; Duca finds that...

John Duca assesses the possibility that adding bond mutual funds, equity mutual funds, or both to M2 would improve this monetary aggregate's ability to forecast nominal GDP growth. He finds that M2B (M2 plus bond funds) and M2+ (M2 plus bond and stock funds) are statistically significant in...

In this article, John Duca shows how financial innovations have benefited the United States by increasing the availability of financing for new firms and improving Americans' access to financial investments. Two dramatic examples are the explosive growth of venture capital financing and the...

John Duca reviews three episodes of "missing money," periods during which one of the monetary aggregates was unusually weak. Duca finds that in each of these episodes, an increased regulatory burden on banks encouraged households and firms to bypass the banking system in favor of nonbank...

In this article, John Duca finds that the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) index of home mortgage applications can help forecast home sales. Alone, the index is a good, albeit imperfect, predictor of total home sales. But when included along with housing affordability and real, after-tax...

John Duca shows that interest rate spreads and loan surveys should be interpreted carefully when assessing the availability of credit and its impact on the economy. This is especially true of interest rate spread indicators, some of which reflect prepayment, liquidity, or default risk premiums...

In this article, John Duca discusses how and why compensation has become more market sensitive in the United States. Specifically, he illustrates how fiercer product market competition can theoretically reduce the prevalence of nominal wage contracts and of indexation in such contracts, while...

This article analyzes the recent rebound in nonfinancial corporate profitability, as measured by after-tax profits as a share of output. Virtually all the resurgence in corporate profitability during the 1990s reflects a cyclical increase in profits and a decline in net interest expense...