This paper presents a new method to estimate the amount of U.S. currency held abroad. The method exploits the fact the Federal Reserve System is the major processor of currency for depository institutions. The method exploits differentials across denominations in the ratios of shipments to...

In the Full-Scale Optimization approach the complete empirical financial return probability distribution is considered, and the utility maximising solution is found through numerical optimization. Earlier studies have shown that this approach is useful for investors following non-linear utility...

Money demand models overpredicted M2 growth in the United States from 1990 to 1993. We examine this overprediction using a model of household demand for liquid wealth. The model is a dynamic generalization of the almost-ideal demand model of Deaton and Muellbauer (1980). We find that the...

Since January 1994, many banks in the United States have initiated retail-deposit sweep programs which reduce statutory reserve requirements by re-labeling transaction deposits as money market deposit accounts. As a result, approximately half of aggregate transaction deposits are now excluded...

This paper is the first of two from the Monetary Services Indices (MSI) Project at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. The second paper, Working Paper 96-008B, summarizes the methodology, construction and data sources for the an extensive new database of monetary services indices, often...

The authors introduce a comprehensive revision of the Divisia monetary aggregates for the United States published by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, referred to as the Monetary Services Indexes (MSI). These revised MSI are available at five levels of aggregation, including a new broad...

Federal Reserve programs during the recent financial crisis sought to provide liquidity to individual firms or industries. An interesting additional question is whether the aggregate amount of liquidity in the economy was appropriate before and during the recent financial crisis.

Forecasting is a daunting challenge for business economists and policymakers, often made more difficult by pervasive uncertainty. No such uncertainty is more difficult than projecting the reaction of policymakers to major shifts in the economy. We explore the process by which the FOMC came to...