Over the past twenty years, the monetary aggregates used by the Federal Reserve as indicators of economic activity and inflation have changed several times. Each of the changes in the measures of money was sparked by a breakdown in the fit of empirical money demand functions. The Federal...

Community bank performance has improved significantly since the financial crisis but is still below pre-crisis levels. One key concern is net interest income, which rose early in the recovery but now is near a 40-year low. Net interest income is important to the long-term viability of community...

Increased interest rate volatility in recent years has led to a greater volatility in profits at savings and loan associations. To help stabilize their profits, some S&L's are implementing interest rate hedging programs. These programs use financial instruments such as interest rate swaps,...