In the absence of a commonly accepted series of the real rate of interest, the typical behavior of this rate remains contentious. The authors derive alternative measures of the short-term real rate from various surveys of inflation expectations. These measures suggest that the real rate averages...

In the past, over periods of several years, the growth rate of the public's dollar expenditure has corresponded to the growth rate of the monetary aggregate M2. At present, however, M2 is growing significantly slower than dollar expenditure. About half of this slowness can be explained by the...

With the recent decline in bank deposits, many bankers see mutual funds as a natural extension of their product lines that allows them to perform better in an increasingly competitive market.