This brief essay is a working draft of an article in preparation for the forthcoming International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, 2nd ed., examining the role of the monetary base in monetary economics and monetary policymaking. Comments are welcome

Portfolio choice by full-scale optimization applies the empirical return distribution to a parameterized utility function, and the maximum is found through numerical optimization. Using a portfolio choice setting of three UK equity indices we identify several utility functions featuring loss...

Despite the increasing use of electronic payments, currency retains an important role in the payments system of every country. Two aspects of currency usage drive currency design worldwide: deterring counterfeiting and making paper currency accessible to the visually impaired. Further, among the...

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...

We develop the principal component analysis (PCA) approach to systematic liquidity measurement by introducing moving and expanding estimation windows. We evaluate these methods along with traditional estimation techniques (full sample PCA and market average) in terms of ability to explain (1)...

According to polls from the 2006 congressional elections, globalization and economic insecurity were the primary concerns of many voters. These Americans apparently believe that they have fallen victim to liberal trade polices and that inexorable trends in globalization are destroying the...

This paper uses several methods to study the interrelationship among Divisia monetary aggregates, prices, and income; allowing for non-stationary, non-linearities, asymmetries, and time-varying relationships among the series. We propose a multivariate regime switching unobserved components model...