A FEDERAL FUNDS RATE EQUATION

This paper presents evidence that indicates that U.S. interest rate policy during most of the 1980s can be described by a reaction function in which the federal funds rate rises if real GDP rises above potential GDE if actual inflation accelerates, or if the long-term bond rate rises. Money growth when included in the reaction function is significant, indicating that money also influenced policy. The results presented here however indicate that in recent years the Fed has discounted the leading indicator properties of money. (JEL E5)     

COMMERCIAL BANKS AND THE FEDERAL FUNDS MARKET: RECENT DEVELOPMENT AND IMPLICATIONS

Several important aspects of the growth of the Federal funds market and non-bank participation in this market are examined. It is shown that the recent growth and development that has taken place has significantly influenced bank behavior and the process of bank credit determination. Additionally, it is shown that non-banks' use of Federal funds sales as an integral part of their cash management affects money demand. The implications of these recent developments in the Federal funds market for policymakers are examined.     

THE CHANGING INFLUENCE OF MONEY AND MONETARY POLICY ON EXCHANGE RATES

This paper focuses on an old issue—the linkage between money announcements and the exchange rate. It shows that the magnitude of the time-varying response of the spot exchange rate to an unanticipated money announcement is mainly driven by agents' expectations of the Federal Reserve's time-varying response to the deviation of the actual money supply from a prespecified target. The inference is, the magnitude of the exchange rate's response to economic announcements depends on market participants' expectations about the announcements and the Fed's probable monetary policy response.     

THE IMPACT OF MONEY ON SHORT-TERM INTEREST RATES

This study reviews empirical evidence from four research methods related to the impact of money on short-term nominal rates. The studies consistently fail to find evidence supporting the much hypothesized short-term, negative relationship between money and nominal rates since at least April 1975. Reasons for the absence of a negative relationship include the tendency of financial markets to anticipate corrective action by the Fed whenever Ml deviates from targeted growth ranges and a rapid adjustment of inflationary expectations to changes in money growth.     

COULD STABLE MONEY HAVE AVERTED THE GREAT CONTRACTION?

We test the hypothesis that the Great Contraction would have been attenuated had the Federal Reserve not allowed the money stock to decline. We simulate a model that estimates separate relations for output and the price level and assumes that output and price dynamics are not especially sensitive to policy changes. The simulations include a strong and a weak form of Friedman's constant money growth rule. The results support the hypothesis that the Great Contraction would have been mitigated and shortened had the Federal Reserve followed a constant money growth rule.     

1979–1982: RULES OR DISCRETION IN MONETARY POLICY?

What determined MI growth from November 1979 through October 1982? A reaction function is developed and tested which ascribes the level of M1 to two Fed motives. One is the Fed's desire to hit its money growth targets, the other is to carry out a counter-cyclical short-run monetary policy. Both motives are found to be significant during the period. This evidence is consistent with the contention of some economists that the period was not a valid test of monetarist policy rules.     

MACROECONOMIC STABILITY AND THE SHORT RUN FEDERAL RESERVE REACTION FUNCTION, 1969–1979

This paper examines the dynamic stability of a situation in which monetary policy is implemented by means of short-run control of interest rates. Using a simple dynamic model it is shown that such procedures may lead to instability unless the central bank allows the controlled interest rate to adjust sufficiently to economic developments. The theoretical model is then used to guide an empirical examination and evaluation of Federal Reserve behavior for the period 1969–1979. Evidence is presented that on average over this period the Federal Reserve's control of the Federal funds rate could have been a destabilizing factor.     

DISCOUNT WINDOW BORROWING AND FEDERAL RESERVE OPERATING REGIMES

I find empirical evidence that bank borrowing behavior at the discount window changed when the Federal Reserve changed its short-run operating procedures and reserve accounting rules. Under narrow Federal funds rate targeting (1975-79), the spread between the funds rate and the discount rate was relatively predictable and borrowing was very sensitive to the spread. Under nonborrowed reserves targeting (1979-82), the spread became more volatile and less predictable, and borrowing became significantly less sensitive to the spread. With the switch to contemporaneous reserve accounting under borrowed reserves targeting in 1984, borrowing became even less sensitive to the spread.     

THE LONG-RUN LINK BETWEEN MONEY GROWTH AND INFLATION

Is inflation always a monetary phenomenon? Many economists believe that the link between money growth and inflation in the U.S. has weakened over the last two decades due in part to the Federal Reserve's policy experiment in 1979–1982 and innovations in the financial sector of the economy. I find that the long-run relationship between money growth and inflation is strong in a statistical sense and important economically. The key result is that the trend or growth component in CPI inflation is entirely due to the trend component of monetary base growth. (JEL C32, E31, E51)     

The credit channel of monetary policy transmission: evidence from stock returns

This paper offers a novel test of the credit view of the monetary policy transmission mechanism using stock market returns. We identify Fed policy shocks using newspaper accounts and track daily stock prices immediately following the shocks. If the credit channel is important, then firms that are dependent on bank credit and internal funds should receive a relatively greater benefit (loss) from a Fed easing (tightening) than firms with access to nonbank credit at favorable terms. We identify ten policy shocks during the expansion of 1993-94 and the 'credit crunch' period of the 1990-91 recession and find little evidence supportive of an operative credit channel.     

THE REACTION OF EXCHANGE RATES TO ECONOMIC NEWS

This paper examines the short-run responses of spot exchange rates to several types of economic news. Survey data are used to divide economic announcements into expected and unexpected components with the latter measuring news. The results indicate that exchange rates are systematically related to unexpected money announcements after the October 1979 switch in Federal Reserve operating procedures but not before. This response does not appear to have changed, however, after the October 1982 Federal Reserve regime change. Short-run exchange rate movements are not systematically related to news on inflation or real activity.     

DEFICITS, POLITICS AND MONEY GROWTH

We examine the linkage between Federal deficits and money growth by allowing the Fed's response to any given deficit to vary systematically according to how the deficit is generated and the Party affiliation of the current president. In equations for Ml and monetary base growth, the structural deficit is consistently significant and invariant across political changes, while the cyclical component of the deficit (or a direct measure of the business cycle) is significant only during the tenure of Democratic presidents.     

MONETARY POLICY REGIME SHIFTS: NEW EVIDENCE FROM TIME‐VARYING INTEREST RATE RULES

We estimate forward‐looking interest rate rules for five large Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development economies, allowing for time variation in the responses to macroeconomic conditions and in the variance of the policy rate. Conventional constant parameter reaction functions likely blur the impact of (1) model uncertainty, (2) conflicting objectives, (3) shifting preferences, and (4) nonlinearities of policymakers' choices. We find that monetary policies followed by the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, and Italy are best summarized by feedback rules that allow for time variation in their parameters. Estimates point to sizeable differences in the actual conduct of monetary policies even in countries now belonging to the European Monetary Union. Moreover, our time‐varying parameter specification outperforms the conventional Taylor rule and generalized method of moment–based estimates of reaction functions in tracking the actual Fed funds rate. (JEL E52, E58, E60)     

Monetary Policy and the U.S. Stock Market

What is the influence of stock market valuations on monetary policy? We use a forward‐looking Taylor rule model to examine if monetary policy since the 19 October 1987 stock market crash has been influenced by the valuation of the stock market. We estimate the model using revised and real‐time data and find no empirical evidence that the Federal Reserve policy attempted to moderate stock market valuations during the late 1990s despite the “irrational exuberance” comments by Chairman Greenspan. Actually, the empirical evidence suggests that the Fed accommodated the high valuations of the stock market during this period.     

THE REACTION OF INTEREST RATES TO UNANTICIPATED FEDERAL RESERVE ACTIONS AND STATEMENTS: IMPLICATIONS FOR THE MONEY ANNOUNCEMENT CONTROVERSY

This paper examines the reaction of long- and short-term interest rates to monetary policy surprises that influenced market expectations of the future behavior of the federal funds rate in the period after October 1979. We find that the relative reaction of long- and short-term rates to policy surprises is similar to the relative reaction of these rates to money announcements. Consequently, we conclude that the large reaction of long-term interest rates to money announcements in the period after October 1979 is consistent with the "policy anticipations hypothesis" which views this reaction as a movement in real interest rates.     

GOVERNMENT DEBT AND THE DEMAND FOR MONEY: AN EXTREME BOUND ANALYSIS

The article provides evidence that there is a relationship between government debt and interest rates via the demand for money. This relationship is examined through the wealth effect of government debt on money demand, and the robustness of the results is tested by the use of extreme bound analysis in addition to standard econometric techniques. We find that OLS regression shows government debt fnfecting the demand for money positively, implying that Federal government debt is net wealth. In addition, the extreme bound analysis shows that the estimates of the government debt coefficient are robust under alternative specifications of the Goldfeld model.     

The allocation of money in cross-class families

This paper examines the patterns of income allocation in cross-class families; that is, in families in which the wife is employed in higher level white-collar or professional employment, and the husband in manual work. Following the work of Jan Pahl (1982 and 1983) families are categorised according to their system of money management. The majority of families here employ either a ‘one purse’system based upon joint family funds, or an independent system based upon separate bank accounts. In addition, couples who use an ‘allowance’system, a shared system, or a variant of the independent system with only one-earner are discussed. Whenever possible, qualitative reports from the families interviewed are drawn upon. The paper reveals ways in which gender-specific behaviour may be observed through the study of families’allocative systems. In particular, the wives’propensity to assume responsibility for food shopping, regardless of the couples’sources of income or allocative pattern chosen, is demonstrated. In addition, however, the source of income – specifically cash payments to the husbands – is seen to have an independent effect upon the couples’perceptions of money within the family. The paper concludes with speculation as to why the majority of these affluent families employ a system of joint family funds.     

2011年：宽松货币政策实施与退出的“滞胀”效应——来自2002～2010年货币存量变动研究的见解

通过对2002～2010年我国货币存量、价格波动与产出增长关系的实证研究,有两个重要的发现：一是一个高的货币存量增长率会带来物价上涨的趋势,而抑制物价上涨的根本之策是降低货币增长率;二是2009～2010年实施的宽松货币政策对产出增长的短期效应开始消褪,而价格则进入了一个上升通道,＂滞胀＂风险已经出现,因而中央银行转向降低通胀的一个明确的货币政策规则应是优选的政策目标。     

U.S. NARROW MONEY FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

This study focuses on sweep programs in establishing conceptually appropriate and reliable measures of narrow money. We propose the aggregates M1RS = M1 + holdings of funds swept in retail sweep programs, and M1S = M1RS + holdings of funds swept in commercial demand deposit sweep programs. Based on quarterly observations from 1959:1–2002:4, cointegration tests indicate the existence of long-run relationships between the velocity of M1S and the corresponding opportunity cost of holding money, using either short-term or long-term interest rates. Tests find weaker evidence for M1RS and little support for MZM. (JEL E41 , G21 )     

UNCERTAIN EFFECTS OF MONEY AND THE LINK BETWEEN THE INFLATION RATE AND INFLATION UNCERTAINTY

In the postwar period high rates of inflation are associated with high levels of inflation uncertainty. In this paper I argue that the inflation rate and inflation uncertainty are linked by forecasters' uncertainty about the impact of money growth on the price level, and I present evidence indicating that this has been the case. As long as the impact of money growth on the price level remains unpredictable, then even predictable money growth will cause inflation uncertainty with its accompanying adverse effects on employment and output.