Essays on consumption, credit, and stabilization

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics, 1994.Includes bibliographical references.by Martina Copelman.Ph.D

Financial innovation and the speed of adjustment of money demand: evidence from Bolivia, Israel, and Venezuela

Traditional studies of money demand for both developed and less developed countries have shown that there are periods of "missing money," that is, there is consistent overprediction of real balances. This paper uses cointegration techniques to study the effects of financial innovation on the demand for real balances in Bolivia, Israel, and Venezuela. The results show that financial innovation can account for the instability of money demand observed in these countries. In particular, I find that the long run demand for real balances shifted down. In addition, I show that the speed at which people adjust their demand for money when out of equilibrium increases following financial innovation.Bolivia ; Israel ; Money ; Venezuela

The monetary transmission mechanism in Mexico

An important question in macroeconomics has been how the transmission mechanism of monetary policy works. In particular, the question of whether there exists a credit channel for the transmission of monetary policy has been one of the central themes in the discussion of the effectiveness of monetary policy. If this channel exists, then shocks to credit markets, particularly to bank loans, can have real effects. This paper presents new evidence on the credit hypothesis for the case of Mexico after 1984. We present a simple variant of the open economy IS-LM model which includes a credit channel. The model has the following empirical implications which are absent from models which do not include a credit channel. We show that changes in the expectations of devaluation, the desired cash/deposit ratio, and measures of financial deregulation, will have real effects because they change the quantity of credit available in the economy. We explore these implications of the model through standard VAR techniques and find that the evidence strongly supports the credit view. We find that the impact on economic activity of credit and nominal depreciation rate shocks is very significant.Mexico ; Monetary policy