The standard loss function gives the same weight to positive and negative deviations from the output and inflation targets. This short note criticizes this symmetry assumption. If the period covered is long enough output growth in excess of the target, and often also inflation rates that are...

When a significance test fails to disconfirm a hypothesis economist often interpret this as evidence that this hypothesis is valid. Six such examples are cited from recent journals. But this is a misinterpretation of what significance tests show. Presumably this misinterpretation is founded on...

How justified is the charge that ideology strongly influences the allegedly objective opinions of economists? An analysis of a new survey of AEA members and of surveys by Fuchs et al of labor economists and public economists shows that value judgments and judgments about the government''s...

Close to half the California school districts let teachers choose whether to receive their salaries ten monthly payments or in twelve. Fisherine intertemporal maximization implies that they should choose ten payments and earn interest on their savings for their summer. But about half choose...

Economists do not communicate efficiently and methodologists should expand their bailiwick to deal with this and with similar practical problems. Both the quality of and the professional prestige associated with popular writing should be enhanced. Academic economists need to pay more attention...

When stock or bond prices drop sharply we are told that the nation''s wealth has fallen. Some commentators go beyond such a vague statement and calculate how many billions of dollars of wealth have been wiped out by multiplying the percentage change in stock prices or bond prices by the previous...

Economists sometimes interpret the failure of a significance test to disconfirm a hypothesis as evidence that this hypothesis is valid. Six examples of this are cited from recent journals. But this is a as interpretation of what significance tests show. While in general it is correct that every...

This paper surveys the monetarist position on various aspects of American monetary policy in an informal way and provides the personal reactions of a participant observer in this debate. It emphasizes the intellectual milieu in which monetarism emerged, the background factors that facilitated...

Many leading methodologists have described the central role that Milton Friedman''s 1953 essay (henceforth referred to as F53) has played in methodological discussions. (See for instance Daniel Hammond, 1998; Kevin Hoover; 2001; Roger Backhouse 2002.) However, it does not necessarily follow that it has...

The differential response of cash reserves of member banks and nonmember banks not subject to the 1936-37 increase in reserve requirements is estimated to determine whether the 1937-38 recession was caused by the increase in reserve requirements. We identify 17 states that maintained constant...