Evidence indicates that special factors such as the steepening of the yield curve in the early '90s and the increased availability and liquidity of mutual funds caused the public to redirect part of its savings balances from bank deposits to bond and stock mutual funds from 1990 to 1994. Except...

Standard M2 demand regressions generate prediction errors in 1990, 1991, and 1992 that cumulate to an overprediction of M2 of about 4.2 to 4.3 percent by the second quarter of 1992. These prediction errors are not large and can be accounted for by M2 demand regressions that include a yield curve...

An error-correction model is used to study the long- and short-run determinants of U.S. demand for M2. The money demand function presented here exhibits parameter stability and predicts quite well the actual behavior of M2 growth in the 1980s

The period 1979-86 saw (1) high interest rates, (2) volatile money growth, and (3) new Fed operating procedures. Was the third item the chief cause of the other two? Probably not. For much of the increased monetary volatility stemmed not from the new procedures but rather from the public's...