IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/jnlbes/v33y2015i2p255-269.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Interest Rates and Money in the Measurement of Monetary Policy

Author

Listed:
  • Michael T. Belongia
  • Peter N. Ireland

Abstract

Over the last 25 years, a set of influential studies has placed interest rates at the heart of analyses that interpret and evaluate monetary policies. In light of this work, the Federal Reserve's recent policy of "quantitative easing," with its goal of affecting the supply of liquid assets, appears to be a radical break from standard practice. Alternatively, one could posit that the monetary aggregates, when measured properly, never lost their ability to explain aggregate fluctuations and, for this reason, represent an important omission from standard models and policy discussions. In this context, the new policy initiatives can be characterized simply as conventional attempts to increase money growth. This view is supported by evidence that superlative (Divisia) measures of money often help in forecasting movements in key macroeconomic variables. Moreover, the statistical fit of a structural vector autoregression deteriorates significantly if such measures of money are excluded when identifying monetary policy shocks. These results cast doubt on the adequacy of conventional models that focus on interest rates alone. They also highlight that all monetary disturbances have an important "quantitative" component, which is captured by movements in a properly measured monetary aggregate.

Suggested Citation

  • Michael T. Belongia & Peter N. Ireland, 2015. "Interest Rates and Money in the Measurement of Monetary Policy," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 33(2), pages 255-269, April.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:jnlbes:v:33:y:2015:i:2:p:255-269
    DOI: 10.1080/07350015.2014.946132
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/07350015.2014.946132
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/07350015.2014.946132?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Michael T. Belongia & Peter N. Ireland, 2012. "Quantitative Easing: Interest Rates and Money in the Measurement of Monetary Policy," Boston College Working Papers in Economics 801, Boston College Department of Economics.
    2. Laidler, David, 1997. "Notes on the Microfoundations of Monetary Economics," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 107(443), pages 1213-1223, July.
    3. Ireland, Peter N., 2014. "The Macroeconomic Effects Of Interest On Reserves," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 18(6), pages 1271-1312, September.
    4. Leeper, Eric M. & Zha, Tao, 2003. "Modest policy interventions," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(8), pages 1673-1700, November.
    5. Hendrickson, Joshua R., 2014. "Redundancy Or Mismeasurement? A Reappraisal Of Money," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 18(7), pages 1437-1465, October.
    6. William Barnett & Jia Liu & Ryan Mattson & Jeff Noort, 2013. "The New CFS Divisia Monetary Aggregates: Design, Construction, and Data Sources," Open Economies Review, Springer, vol. 24(1), pages 101-124, February.
    7. Bernanke, Ben S & Blinder, Alan S, 1992. "The Federal Funds Rate and the Channels of Monetary Transmission," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 82(4), pages 901-921, September.
    8. Tatom, John A., 2014. "U.S. monetary policy in disarray," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 12(C), pages 47-58.
    9. Mark Gertler & Jordi Gali & Richard Clarida, 1999. "The Science of Monetary Policy: A New Keynesian Perspective," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 37(4), pages 1661-1707, December.
    10. Barnett, William A., 2012. "Getting it Wrong: How Faulty Monetary Statistics Undermine the Fed, the Financial System, and the Economy," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262516888, April.
    11. Ireland, Peter N, 2004. "Money's Role in the Monetary Business Cycle," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 36(6), pages 969-983, December.
    12. William A. Barnett, 2000. "Economic Monetary Aggregates: An Application of Index Number and Aggregation Theory," Contributions to Economic Analysis, in: The Theory of Monetary Aggregation, pages 11-48, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    13. Christopher A. Sims & Tao Zha, 2006. "Were There Regime Switches in U.S. Monetary Policy?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(1), pages 54-81, March.
    14. Sims, Christopher A., 1992. "Interpreting the macroeconomic time series facts : The effects of monetary policy," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 36(5), pages 975-1000, June.
    15. Taylor, John B, 1979. "Estimation and Control of a Macroeconomic Model with Rational Expectations," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 47(5), pages 1267-1286, September.
    16. Belongia, Michael T. & Ireland, Peter N., 2006. "The Own-Price of Money and the Channels of Monetary Transmission," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 38(2), pages 429-445, March.
    17. Belongia, Michael T. & Ireland, Peter N., 2014. "The Barnett critique after three decades: A New Keynesian analysis," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 183(1), pages 5-21.
    18. Eric M. Leeper & Jennifer E. Roush, 2003. "Putting \\"M\\" back in monetary policy," Proceedings, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, pages 1217-1264.
    19. Bernanke, Ben S & Blinder, Alan S, 1988. "Credit, Money, and Aggregate Demand," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 78(2), pages 435-439, May.
    20. Peter N. Ireland, 2011. "A New Keynesian Perspective on the Great Recession," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 43(1), pages 31-54, February.
    21. Friedman, Milton, 1984. "Lessons from the 1979-82 Monetary Policy Experiment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 74(2), pages 397-400, May.
    22. Edward Nelson, 2007. "Milton Friedman and U.S. monetary history: 1961-2006," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 89(May), pages 153-182.
    23. Milton Friedman & Anna J. Schwartz, 1963. "A Monetary History of the United States, 1867–1960," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number frie63-1.
    24. Friedman, Benjamin M, 1984. "Lessons from the 1979-82 Monetary Policy Experiment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 74(2), pages 382-387, May.
    25. Gauti B. Eggertsson & Michael Woodford, 2003. "The Zero Bound on Interest Rates and Optimal Monetary Policy," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 34(1), pages 139-235.
    26. Jeffrey J. Hallman & Richard D. Porter & David H. Small, 1989. "M2 per unit of potential GNP as an anchor for the price level," Staff Studies 157, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    27. Eric M. Leeper & Jennifer E. Roush, 2003. "Putting \"M\" back in monetary policy," International Finance Discussion Papers 761, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    28. Mccallum, Bennet T., 1988. "Robustness properties of a rule for monetary policy," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 29(1), pages 173-203, January.
    29. Benjamin M. Friedman, 1984. "Lessons from the 1979-1982 Monetary Policy Experiment," NBER Working Papers 1272, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    30. Belongia, Michael T, 1996. "Measurement Matters: Recent Results from Monetary Economics Reexamined," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 104(5), pages 1065-1083, October.
    31. Hallman, Jeffrey J & Porter, Richard D & Small, David H, 1991. "Is the Price Level Tied to the M2 Monetary Aggregate in the Long Run?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(4), pages 841-858, September.
    32. Hetzel,Robert L., 2008. "The Monetary Policy of the Federal Reserve," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521881326, September.
    33. Mark Gertler & Jordi Gali & Richard Clarida, 1999. "The Science of Monetary Policy: A New Keynesian Perspective," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 37(4), pages 1661-1707, December.
    34. Thoma, Mark A & Gray, Jo Anna, 1998. "Financial Market Variables Do Not Predict Real Activity," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 36(4), pages 522-539, October.
    35. Giorgio E. Primiceri, 2005. "Time Varying Structural Vector Autoregressions and Monetary Policy," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 72(3), pages 821-852.
    36. Flanders, M.J., 1996. "Left-and Right-Endogeneous Mony: A Tale of Two Books. Steven Horwitz, Monetary Evolution, Free Banking and Economic Order; L. Randall Wray, Money and Credit in Capitalist Economies, the Engogenous Mon," University of Western Ontario, Departmental Research Report Series 9610, University of Western Ontario, Department of Economics.
    37. Friedman, Benjamin M & Kuttner, Kenneth N, 1992. "Money, Income, Prices, and Interest Rates," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 82(3), pages 472-492, June.
    38. Taylor, John B., 1993. "Discretion versus policy rules in practice," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(1), pages 195-214, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Michael T. Belongia & Peter N. Ireland, 2016. "Money and Output: Friedman and Schwartz Revisited," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 48(6), pages 1223-1266, September.
    2. Michael T. Belongia & Peter N. Ireland, 2012. "Quantitative Easing: Interest Rates and Money in the Measurement of Monetary Policy," Boston College Working Papers in Economics 801, Boston College Department of Economics.
    3. Belongia, Michael T. & Ireland, Peter N., 2015. "A “Working” Solution To The Question Of Nominal Gdp Targeting," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 19(3), pages 508-534, April.
    4. John W. Keating & Logan J. Kelly & A. Lee Smith & Victor J. Valcarcel, 2019. "A Model of Monetary Policy Shocks for Financial Crises and Normal Conditions," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 51(1), pages 227-259, February.
    5. Belongia, Michael T. & Ireland, Peter N., 2017. "Circumventing the zero lower bound with monetary policy rules based on money," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 54(PA), pages 42-58.
    6. Belongia, Michael T. & Ireland, Peter N., 2019. "The demand for Divisia Money: Theory and evidence," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 1-1.
    7. Belongia, Michael T. & Ireland, Peter N., 2014. "The Barnett critique after three decades: A New Keynesian analysis," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 183(1), pages 5-21.
    8. Michael T. Belongia & Peter N. Ireland, 2021. "A Classical View of the Business Cycle," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 53(2-3), pages 333-366, March.
    9. Dery, Cosmas & Serletis, Apostolos, 2021. "Interest Rates, Money, And Economic Activity," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 25(7), pages 1842-1891, October.
    10. Chen, Zhengyang & Valcarcel, Victor J., 2021. "Monetary transmission in money markets: The not-so-elusive missing piece of the puzzle," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 131(C).
    11. Belongia, Michael T. & Ireland, Peter N., 2024. "The transmission of monetary policy shocks through the markets for reserves and money," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 80(C).
    12. Richard G. Anderson & Marcelle Chauvet & Barry Jones, 2015. "Nonlinear Relationship Between Permanent and Transitory Components of Monetary Aggregates and the Economy," Econometric Reviews, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 34(1-2), pages 228-254, February.
    13. Michael T. Belongia & Peter N. Ireland, 2013. "Instability: Monetary and Real," Boston College Working Papers in Economics 830, Boston College Department of Economics.
    14. Tatom, John A., 2014. "U.S. monetary policy in disarray," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 12(C), pages 47-58.
    15. Lütkepohl, Helmut & Woźniak, Tomasz, 2020. "Bayesian inference for structural vector autoregressions identified by Markov-switching heteroskedasticity," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 113(C).
    16. Chen, Zhengyang & Valcarcel, Victor J., 2024. "A granular investigation on the stability of money demand," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, issue FirstView, pages 1-26.
    17. Belongia, Michael T. & Ireland, Peter N., 2022. "A reconsideration of money growth rules," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 135(C).
    18. Peter N. Ireland, 2024. "Money in the Search for a Nominal Anchor," Boston College Working Papers in Economics 1078, Boston College Department of Economics.
    19. Keating, John W. & Smith, A. Lee, 2019. "The optimal monetary instrument and the (mis)use of causality tests," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 90-99.
    20. Eric M. Leeper & Tao Zha, 2001. "Assessing simple policy rules: a view from a complete macroeconomic model," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 83(Jul), pages 83-112.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E51 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Money Supply; Credit; Money Multipliers
    • E52 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Monetary Policy
    • E58 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Central Banks and Their Policies

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:jnlbes:v:33:y:2015:i:2:p:255-269. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/UBES20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.