Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-vdxz6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-29T15:02:22.086Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

THE CASE FOR DIVISIA MONEY TARGETING

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2012

Apostolos Serletis*
Affiliation:
University of Calgary
Sajjadur Rahman
Affiliation:
Texas A&M University–San Antonio
*
Address correspondence to: Apostolos Serletis, Department of Economics, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta T2N 1N4, Canada; e-mail: [email protected]; URL: http://econ.ucalgary.ca/profiles/apostolos-serletis.

Abstract

In this paper we investigate the relationship between money growth uncertainty and the level of economic activity in the United States. We pay explicit attention to the Divisia monetary aggregates. In doing so, we use the new vintage of the data [called MSI (monetary services indices) by the St. Louis Fed], together with the simple sum monetary aggregates, over the period from 1967:1 to 2011:3. In the context of a bivariate VARMA, GARCH-in-mean, asymmetric BEKK model, we show that increased Divisia money growth volatility (irrespective of the level of aggregation and the method of calculation) is associated with a lower average growth rate of real economic activity. However, there are no effects of simple-sum money growth volatility on real economic activity, except with the Sum M1 and perhaps Sum M2M aggregates. We conclude that monetary policies that focus on the Divisia monetary aggregates and target their growth rates will contribute to higher overall economic growth.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Anderson, Richard G. and Jones, Barry E. (in press) A comprehensive revision of the monetary services (Divisia) indexes for the United States. Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Review.Google Scholar
Barnett, William A. (1980) Economic monetary aggregates: An application of aggregation and index number theory. Journal of Econometrics 14, 1148.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barnett, William A. (2011) Getting It Wrong: How Faulty Monetary Statistics Undermine the Fed, the Financial System, and the Economy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barnett, William A. and Chauvet, Marcelle (2011) How better monetary statistics could have signaled the financial crisis. Journal of Econometrics 161, 623.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dickey, David A. and Fuller, Wayne A. (1981) Likelihood ratio statistics for autoregressive time series with a unit root. Econometrica 49, 10571072.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Engle, Robert F. and Kroner, Kenneth F. (1995) Multivariate simultaneous generalized ARCH. Econometric Theory 11, 122150.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Friedman, Milton (1983) Monetary variability: The United States and Japan. Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking 15, 339343.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Friedman, Milton (1984) Lessons from the 1979–1982 monetary policy experiment. American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings 74, 397400.Google Scholar
Grier, Kevin B., Henry, Ólan T., Olekalns, Nills, and Shields, Kalvinder (2004) The asymmetric effects of uncertainty on inflation and output growth. Journal of Applied Econometrics 19, 551565.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hansen, Peter R. and Lunde, Asger (2005) A forecast comparison of volatility models: Does anything beat a GARCH(1,1)? Journal of Applied Econometrics 20, 873889.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kroner, Kenneth F. and Ng, Victor K. (1998) Modeling asymmetric comovements of asset returns. Review of Financial Studies 11, 817844.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kwiatkowski, D., Phillips, P. C. B., Schmidt, P., and Shin, Y. (1992) Testing the null hypothesis of stationarity against the alternative of a unit root. Journal of Econometrics 54, 159178.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ljung, T. and Box, G. (1979) On a measure of lack of fit in time series models. Biometrica 66, 6672.Google Scholar
Serletis, Apostolos and Rahman, Sajjadur (2009) The output effects of money growth uncertainty: Evidence from a multivariate GARCH-in-mean VAR. Open Economies Review 20, 607630.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Serletis, Apostolos and Shahmoradi, Akbar (2006) Velocity and the variability of money growth: Evidence from a VARMA, GARCH-M model. Macroeconomic Dynamics 10, 652666.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shields, Kalvinder, Olekalns, Nills, Henry, Ólan T., and Brooks, Chris (2005) Measuring the response of macroeconomic uncertainty to shocks. Review of Economics and Statistics 87, 362370.CrossRefGoogle Scholar