Recently an intense debate has focused on M2's usefulness as an intermediate target for monetary policy. A review of two leading contributions to the debate indicates that their empirical results are sensitive to changes in key assumptions. Moreover, their empirical results lack the deep...

This brief essay is a working draft of an article in preparation for the forthcoming International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, 2nd ed., examining the role of the monetary base in monetary economics and monetary policymaking. Comments are welcome.

Milton Friedman Luncheon, University of Missouri-Columbia, Columbia, Mo., July 31, 2007

Data on the monetary aggregates are the fundamental raw material for research in many facets of economics and finance. Money demand modeling, measurement of money stock announcement effects, tests of the rationality of preliminary money stock forecasts and financial market efficiency, and...

This paper offers a general equilibrium model that explains how the observed correlations of money and output fluctuations may come about through endogenously determined fluctuations in the money multiplier. The model is calibrated to meet long run features of the U.S. economy (including...

This paper includes revised and extended versions of tables of historical .S. currency and monetary aggregates data compiled for the forthcoming work: Susan B. Carter et.al., editors, Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to the Present, Millennial Edition. Three volumes....