Black economic thought and the southern economy

From early in the nineteenth century Southern whites often analyzed the ills of the South as originating in the region’s colonial relation to the North. A survey of black economic thought, academic, journalistic and political, suggests that this notion was never strongly endorsed by black intellectuals. The outstanding exceptions were works by black sociologists collaborating with white colleagues in the 1930s. For the most part, however, black writers subscribed to a view that emphasized the dependent nature, not of the South, but of the economy of the black community in its relations with the South.     

THE OVERNIGHT AND DAILY TRANSMISSION OF STOCK INDEX FUTURES PRICES BETWEEN MAJOR INTERNATIONAL MARKETS

Stock index futures prices for the world's major equity markets, Japan, the UK and the US, are used to examine the interaction of international equity markets. By using stock index futures prices, we avoid the nonsynchronous data problem inherent with opening and closing market averages. We find that the US is the dominant world market; overnight returns in Japan and the UK are greatly influenced by the US daily returns. In contrast, the Japanese market has no impact on the overnight or daily returns in the UK, while the UK daily performance has a small influence on Japanese overnight returns. Slight evidence of over-reaction at the opening of Japanese futures exists as the daily Nikkei returns are negatively related to the US returns.     

Implementing monetary base rules: The currency problem

Monetary policy rules which rely on the monetary base have been advocated by Meltzer and McCallum. Proponents claim that following monetary base rules would minimize fluctuations around the target growth rate for nominal GNP. Critics of such rules contend that currency has not been properly accounted for in their analysis. This paper examines McCallum's monetary base rule by explicitly taking the demand for currency into account. Assuming that currency is supplied elastically, our investigation quantifies changes in the composition of the monetary base under these rules and provides an estimate of how these compositional changes might affect the variability around the target nominal GNP growth rate.