The stability of money demand in China: Evidence from the ARDL model

This study examines the demand for broad money (M2) in China using the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) cointegration framework. The results based on the bounds testing procedure confirm that a stable, long-run relationship exists between M2 and its determinants: real income, inflation, foreign interest rates and stock prices. Importantly, our results reveal that stock prices have a significant wealth effect on long- and short-run broad money demand; its omission can lead to serious misspecifications in the money demand function (MDF). This finding is consistent with the notion that asset inflation (deflation) has systematic influence on the pattern of monetary aggregates.     

Bequest motives and household money demand

The bequest motive is an important motive determining intergenerational transfers of income, saving, and money. However, it has received little or no attention from past studies on money demand. This study utilizes panel data to show that the bequest motive is positively related to money demand and interacts with the life-cycle motive during various stages of an individual’s life. Householders with bequest motives are more likely to transfer a greater proportion of their permanent incomes to monetary assets than those without bequest motives.     

Money growth and interest rate volatility and the demand for money

In this paper the author empirically examines the effects of both money growth and interest rate volatility measures upon the demand for real balances. The findings of this study suggest that both money growth and interest rate volatility measures are statistically insignificant. However, evidence suggests a structural shift in the demand for money in the post-1979 period. Moreover, there is a noticeable change in the speed of adjustment moving from actual to desired real balances with the adjustment coefficient in the post-1979 period increasing roughly in magnitude nine and half, times the adjustment coefficient in the pre-1979 period.     

Exchange rate volatility and demand for money in less developed countries

One implication of currency substitution is that the exchange rate could serve as another determinant of the demand for money. Indeed, many studies have justified this empirically for the majority of countries. If the exchange rate serves as a determinant of the demand for money, exchange rate volatility could also influence money demand. By using annual data from 15 less developed countries and the bounds testing approach, we show that exchange rate volatility has short-run effects on the demand for real M2 monetary aggregate in LDCs. However, in most countries, short-run effects are not sustained.     

Reexamining the term structure of interest rates and the interwar demand for money

This paper reexamines whether the term structure of interest rates, rather than merely a single interest rate, should be included in the demand for money of the interwar era. In contrast to earlier work, we use cointegration techniques to model the equilibrium/error correction process, and find that a sufficiently rich dynamic model using a single interest rate has considerable explanatory power. Nevertheless, we conclude that the inclusion of the term structure may help to explain the turbulent monetary dynamics of the Depression era.     

Causality and the independence phenomenon: The case of the demand for money

We examine the demand for money using causality results with data from two alternative policy regimes. For Spanish series of money and prices we obtain the same result of independence that Feige and others found with U.S. data. The result of the test for the German hyperinflation period reveals bidirectional causality. It is shown that the somehow striking results of widespread independence among economic time series do not disprove but rather confirm the existence of a true underlying causal relationship. Causality results, and independence in particular, give us testable restriction for the structural form. In the case of models for expectations in the rate of inflation, these restrictions allow us to revalidate the stability of the demand for money as postulated by the Quantity Theory.     

On estimating the effects of peak demand pricing

Extreme value distributions are seldom used in economics, despite what seems to be a natural application to peak demand pricing. This paper estimates the effect of an individual peak demand charge which is a component of the standard industrial electricity rate structure. The extreme value distribution is used in forming the likelihood function of individual peak demand which is then estimated on a sample of five Ontario cement firms from 1970–1977. Goodness-of-fit tests tend to support the use of the extreme value distribution.     

Sources of downward bias in estimating the demand income elasticity for urban housing

Housing demand studies, whether relying upon individual or grouped data, have limited their observations to similar housing units and/or similar housing consumers to help control for product heterogeneity. Yet similar housing units tend to locate in clusters; tenants tend to segregate by race and income. The unintended results may be: (1) for grouped data, selection of a product subgroup with a supply price elasticity small enough to matter; (2) for individual data, selection of a consumer subgroup possessing a lower income elasticity than all housing consumers. Evidence is given that the supply price elasticity is sometimes small enough to matter when grouped data are used.     

Towards estimating extremal serial dependence via the bootstrapped extremogram

Davis and Mikosch (2009a) introduced the extremogram as a flexible quantitative tool for measuring various types of extremal dependence in a stationary time series. There we showed some standard statistical properties of the sample extremogram. A major difficulty was the construction of credible confidence bands for the extremogram. In this paper, we employ the stationary bootstrap to overcome this problem. The use of the stationary bootstrap for the extremogram and the resulting interpretations are illustrated with several financial time series.     

Estimating the demand for money in Canada: Does including an own rate of return matter?

Traditional studies estimating the long-run demand for real money in Canada assume that narrow money, or M1, bears zero interest. However if implicit interest has been paid, such interest should be taken into account in determining the opportunity cost of holding money. Using quarterly data over the period 1961:1–2000:3 we construct and employ a competitive own rate of return variable. Over 1961:1–1982:1, the conventional money demand model which omits an own rate of return performs well. Over the period 1982:2–2000:3, where the degree of competition in the banking industry increased, the conventional money demand model does not perform well, whereas inclusion of the own rate of return yields correct parameter estimates.     

Monetary anticipation and the demand for money in the U.K.: Testing rationality in the Shock-Absorber hypothesis

The Carr-Darby shock-absorber hypothesis that unanticipated changes in the money supply cause changes in real balances but anticipated changes have a unit impact on the price level (and therefore leave real balances unchanged) is tested using two-step and joint estimation techniques. For the U.K., two-step methods appear to support the shock-absorber hypothesis, but the superior joint estimation technique decisively rejects the hypothesis, particularly the implicit rational expectations cross-equation restrictions.     

Multiple and pairwise non-nested tests of the influence of taxes on money demand

The minimal computational requirements of the linear embedding techniques initiated by Davidson and MacKinnon (1981) accommodate multiple and binary tests of autoregressive, non-nested regression models with different dependent variables. The small sample adjustments of Fisher and McAleer (1981) effectively reduce the size of the P-tests for our models. Our application to transactions demand for money models supports the Holmes and Smyth (1972) hypothesis that pre-tax variables are preferred to GNP in M1 money equations.     

Financial reforms and money demand: Evidence from 20 developing countries

The effects of financial reforms on money demand (M1) are analysed with estimates for two sets of sub-samples and two break dates for twenty developing Asian and African countries. In all cases, the magnitude of income elasticity does not change significantly when compared with sub-samples and whole sample periods. Using CUSUM and CUSUMSQ tests, we find that the demand for money functions in our selected countries are temporally stable and therefore the respective monetary authorities may target money supply as the conduct of monetary policy.     

A comparison among partial adjustment,rational expectations and error correction estimates of the canadian demand for money

Starting from a dynamic optimization principle, the currently most popular approaches to modelling money demand functions are derived. The partial adjustment/adaptive expectations, rational expectations, and error correction mechanism formulations are then estimated using a common data set. The error correction mechanism equation is found to dominate the others either because their implicit restrictions are rejected (rational expectations) or by employing the encompassing principle (partial adjustment/adaptive expectations). Surprisingly all three forms have similar long-run solutions. Since the short-run dynamics differ substantially, the results have important implications for the conduct of monetary policy.     

The impact of foreign variables on domestic money demand: Evidence from the United Kingdom

This paper contributes to the existing money demand literature by developing and estimating a shopping-time model in an open economy framework. Based on this microfoundations-of-money model, United Kingdom quarterly data for the period 1973:2–1997:2 are analyzed in the empirical study. After accounting for nonstationarity in the time series processes, I find three long-run relationships among the relevant variables. Estimation of the error-correction representation implied by the model shows that the foreign exchange rates and the imports consumption, in addition to the domestic variables, have significant effects on British demand for real money. I am grateful to Kenneth D. West, Donald D. Hester, James M. Johannes, Hung-Neng Lai, two anonymous referees, and seminar participants at the University of Alabama and the University of Wisconsin for helpful comments. I also thank the Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation for its financial support. Naturally, all remaining errors are mine.     

Demand for money in the Euro area

We analyzed the stability of the money demand function using panel data from January 1999 through March 2006, covering the 11 EU countries (Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, and Spain). First, we found that the money demand function was stable with respect to M3. This arguably supports the suitability of the ECB's focus on M3 money supply in its monetary policy. Second, the stability of the money demand function was recognized with respect not only to M3, but also to M1 and M2. Accordingly, the ECB's adoption of M1 or M2 growth as a reference value should probably be considered depending on how conditions change going forward.     

China Gropes Towards Markets

The continued cautious advance of communist China towards economic liberalism and the resultant internal debate is decumented by Geoffrey Parkins, a Research Consultant at the University of Surrey and Lecturer at Willesden College.     

Comparing forecasts from fixed and variable coefficient models: The case of money demand

In this paper we introduce a class of tentatively plausible, fixed-coefficient models of money demand and evaluate their forecast performance. When these models are reestimated allowing all coefficients to vary over time, the forecasting performance improves dramatically. Aside from offering insights about improved methods of analyzing time series data, the most promising direct use for point estimates derived from time-varying coefficients is as an aid in calibrating proposed models of the kind discussed here.     

Is there a long run demand for currency in China?

The record of Chinese monetary authorities at targeting MO in the late eighties early nineties is rather poor. This paper thus first aims at determining whether the instability of currency demand is responsible for this. By so doing we show, using adequate econometric techniques, that a long-run demand for currency did exist over the 1988–1993 period, with quarterly data.Most previous studies concluded that the income elasticity of currency demand in China is very high. The second objective of the paper is to test for the robustness of this result. We show that this income elasticity is unity when proper account is taken of institutional variables representative of the transition process.Abbreviations ADF Augmented Dickey Fuller - ARCH Auto Regressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity - IMF International Monetary Fund - LDCs Less Developed Countries - M0 currency - M1 narrow money - M2 broad money - PBC People's Bank of China - VAR Vector Auto Regressive Model Comments on an earlier version by my colleagues Christian Bordes and Dominique Lacoue-Labarthe and by an anonymous referee were very useful in improving the present paper. It also benefited from comments by participants at the annual conference of the (UK) Chinese Economic Society in December 1995. However, I remain solely responsible for all remaining errors.