Monetary aggregates play little role in the conduct of monetary policy
Wednesday, December 3, 2008 - 12:35
in Mathematics & Economics
In conventional macroeconomic thinking, the money supply is considered the main determinant of long-run inflation. A variety of monetary aggregates have been proposed to measure the money supply. Yet, nowadays, monetary aggregates play little role in monetary policy deliberations at most central banks. A new study in the Journal of Money, Credit and Banking examines the leading arguments for assigning an important role to tracking the growth of monetary aggregates when making decisions about monetary policy. The analysis finds that none of the arguments provides a compelling reason to assign a prominent role to monetary aggregates.