It has become almost conventional wisdom that investors should avoid funds with high expense ratios. Like many nuggets of conventional wisdom, there is some truth, but many exceptions: some of the best funds come at the price of higher expense ratios. Financial planners need this type of...

Milton Friedman said that inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon. Most people, when they think of inflation, think in terms of the goods and services that they buy. In fact, Friedman’s dictum can be extended to include inflated home prices, stock prices, commodity prices, or...

Towards the end of 2007 and the beginning of 2008, the Federal Reserve began using — or reviving — innovative tools for providing liquidity to the financial markets. This paper examines the types of tools at the disposal of the Federal Reserve System and highlights how the Federal Reserve...

Capital mobility impedes the ability of authorities to pursue independent policy goals. Market participants will drive the informal adoption of the most adaptive currency. The current paper is descriptive, predictive, and prescriptive. A Granger-Sims causality test shows the dependency of...

Most literature that labels certain behavior as “irrational” ignores the etymology of the word “rational.” To be “rational” is to be proportionate (i.e., in a ratio). The question is, “proportionate to what?” To label behavior as irrational is to assert that the behavior is not...