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Working Paper
Assertion without empirical basis : an econometric appraisal of monetary trends in ... the United Kingdom, by Milton Friedman and Anna J. Schwartz
This paper critically re-evaluates some of the fundamental empirical claims about monetary behavior in the United Kingdom made by Milton Friedman and Anna J. Schwartz in their 1982 book Monetary Trends in the United States and the United Kingdom. We focus on six aspects of their analysis: the exogeneity of money; their claims of the constancy and correct specification of their money-demand equation; their interpretation of a dummy variable in that equation as capturing a "shift in liquidity preference" for 1921-55; their treatment of the interdependence of money, income, prices, and ...
Working Paper
An econometric analysis of UK money demand in MONETARY TRENDS IN THE UNITED STATES AND THE UNITED KINGDOM by Milton Friedman and Anna J. Schwartz
This paper evaluates an empirical model of UK money demand developed by Friedman and Schwartz in Monetary Trends... .Testing reveals mis-specification and hence the potential for an improved model. Using recursive procedures on their annual data, we obtain a better-fitting, constant, dynamic error-correction (cointegration) model. Results on exogeneity and encompassing imply that our money-demand model is interpretable as a model of money but not of prices since its constancy holds only conditional on contemporaneous prices.
Working Paper
Cointegration tests in the presence of structural breaks
Structural breaks in stationary time series can induce apparent unit roots in those series. Thus, using recently developed recursive Monte Carlo techniques, this paper investigates the properties of several cointegration tests when the marginal process of one of the variables in the cointegrating relationship is stationary with a structural break. The break has little effect on the tests' size. However, tests based on estimated error correction models generally are more powerful than Engle and Granger's two-step procedure employing the Dickey-Fuller unit root test. Discrepancies in power ...
Working Paper
Exogeneity, cointegration, and economic policy analysis
This overview examines conditions for reliable economic policy analysis based on econometric models, focusing on the econometric concepts of exogeneity, cointegration, causality, and invariance. Weak, strong, and super exogeneity are discussed in general; and these concepts are then applied to the use of econometric models in policy analysis when the variables are cointegrated. Implications follow for model constancy, the Lucas critique, equation inversion, and impulse response analysis. A small money-demand model for the United Kingdom illustrates the main analytical points. This paper then ...
Discussion Paper
Milton Friedman and Data Adjustment
When empirically modelling the U.S. demand for money, Milton Friedman more than doubled the observed initial stock of money to account for a "changing degree of financial sophistication" in the United States relative to the United Kingdom. This note discusses effects of this adjustment on Friedman's empirical models. His data adjustment dramatically reduced apparent movements in the velocity of circulation of money, and it adversely affected the constancy and fit of his estimated money demand models.
Working Paper
The demand for broad money in the United Kingdom, 1878-1993
Using annual data from Friedman and Schwartz (1982), Hendry and Ericsson (1991a) developed an empirical model of the demand for broad money in the United Kingdom over 1878-1975. We update that model over 1976-1993, accounting for changed data definitions and clarifying the concept of constancy. With appropriate measures of opportunity cost and credit deregulation, the model's parameters are empirically constant over the extended sample, which was economically turbulent. Policy implications follow for parameter nonconstancy and predictive failure, causation between money and prices, monetary ...
Working Paper
Conditional econometric modelling : an application to new house prices in the United Kingdom
The statistical formulation of the econometric model is viewed as a sequence of marginalizing and conditioning operations which reduce the parameterization to manageable dimensions. Such operations entail that the "error" is a derived rather than an autonomous process, suggesting designing the model to satisfy data-based and theory criteria. The relevant concepts are explained and applied to data modelling of UK new house prices in the framework of an economic theory-model of house builders. The econometric model is compared with univariate time-series models and tested against a range of ...
Working Paper
Cointegration, seasonality, encompassing, and the demand for money in the United Kingdom
Virtually all previous narrow money demand studies for the United Kingdom have used seasonally adjusted data for money, prices, and expenditure. This paper develops a constant, data-coherent M1 demand equation for the United Kingdom with seasonally unadjusted data. For that model, we address issues of cointegration, error correction, generalto-specific modeling, dynamic specification, model evaluation and testing, parameter constancy, and exogeneity. We also establish theoretical and empirical relationships between seasonally adjusted and unadjusted data, and so between models using those ...
Working Paper
An analogue model of phase-averaging procedures
This paper considers the statistical and econometric effect that fixed n-period phase-averaging has on time series generated by some simple dynamic processes. We focus on the variance and autocorrelation of the data series and of the disturbance term for levels and difference equations involving the phase-average data. Further, we examine the effect of phase-averaging on the erogeneity of variables in those equations and the implications phase-averaging has for conducting statistical inference. ; To illustrate our analytical results, we investigate claims by Friedman and Schwartz in their ...
Working Paper
General-to-specific modeling: an overview and selected bibliography
This paper discusses the econometric methodology of general-to-specific modeling, in which the modeler simplifies an initially general model that adequately characterizes the empirical evidence within his or her theoretical framework. Central aspects of this approach include the theory of reduction, dynamic specification, model selection procedures, model selection criteria, model comparison, encompassing, computer automation, and empirical implementation. This paper thus reviews the theory of reduction, summarizes the approach of general-to-specific modeling, and discusses the econometrics ...