Does Money Include Information for Output in the Euro Area?

In this paper, the importance of money for the output development is analysed over the period from 1980 to 2000 for the euro area, where simple sum and Divisia monetary aggregates are used. Adapting an in-sample analysis, all real monetary aggregates help to explain the output gap of the euro area regardless of what real interest rate is used to explain the IS curve. The out-of-sample forecasting exercise presents evidence that broadly defined monetary aggregates reduce the forecast errors of the output gap in the medium term.