Consumer Demand and Labor Supply (scanned out-of-print 1981 Elsevier book)

The following highly-cited research monograph, although widely available in libraries, is now out of print: William A. Barnett, Consumer Demand and Labor Supply, North Holland, Amsterdam, 1981. In case you do not have access to the printed book, I have scanned it and put it online below. Since scanners are not perfect at scanning mathematics, you should prefer the printed book, if you can borrow it from a library. Otherwise, you are free to read any of its chapters online. The chapters in this Table of Contents are hyperlinked to the online chapters.consumer demand, labor supply, systemwide models, systems of equations, aggregation theory, index number theory, Divisia, household production, simultaneous estimation

Supply of Money

This short paper is the encyclopedia entry on Supply of Money to appear in the second edition of the International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. The encyclopedia is edited by William A. Darity and forthcoming from Macmillan Reference USA (Thomson Gale).monetary aggregation; index number theory; Divisia index; encyclopedia entry; aggregation theory; supply of money

Is Macroeconomics a Science?

This paper was written as the first draft of the invited Foreword for the book, Money and the Economy, by Apostolos Serletis. The paper provides a critical view of those areas in which methodology in economics deviates from that in the physical sciences, provides examples and illustrations of those deviations, and emphasizes those areas of and approaches to economic research that most closely correspond with the nature of research in the physical sciences.science; social science; politics; Federal Reserve; monetary policy

Rotterdam vs Almost Ideal Models: Will the Best Demand Specification Please Stand Up?

Among the many demand specifications in the literature, the Rotterdam model and the Almost Ideal Demand System (AIDS) have particularly long histories, have been highly developed, and are often applied in consumer demand systems modeling. Using Monte Carlo techniques, we seek to determine which model performs better in terms of its ability to recover the true elasticities of demand. We derive the correct formulae for the AIDS models elasticities, when the Törnqvist or two modified versions of the Stone index are used to linearize the model. The resulting linearized AIDS are compared to the full AIDS

How better monetary statistics could have signaled the financial crisis

This paper explores the disconnect of Federal Reserve data from index number theory. A consequence could have been the decreased systemic-risk misperceptions that contributed to excess risk taking prior to the housing bust. We find that most recessions in the past 50 years were preceded by more contractionary monetary policy than indicated by simple-sum monetary data. Divisia monetary aggregate growth rates were generally lower than simple-sum aggregate growth rates in the period preceding the Great Moderation, and higher since the mid 1980s. Monetary policy was more contractionary than likely intended before the 2001 recession and more expansionary than likely intended during the subsequent recovery.Measurement error, monetary aggregation, Divisia index, aggregation, monetary policy, index number theory, financial crisis, great moderation, Federal Reserve.

How Better Monetary Statistics Could Have Signaled the Financial Crisis

This paper explores the disconnect of Federal Reserve data from index number theory. A consequence could have been the decreased systemic-risk misperceptions that contributed to excess risk taking prior to the housing bust. We find that most recessions in the past 50 years were preceded by more contractionary monetary policy than indicated by simple-sum monetary data. Divisia monetary aggregate growth rates were generally lower than simple-sum aggregate growth rates in the period preceding the Great Moderation, and higher since the mid 1980s. Monetary policy was more contractionary than likely intended before the 2001 recession and more expansionary than likely intended during the subsequent recovery.Measurement error, monetary aggregation, Divisia index, aggregation, monetary policy, index number theory, financial crisis, great moderation, Federal Reserve.

An Interview with Franco Modigliani

These are the page proofs of the interview of Franco Modigliani by William A. Barnett and Robert Solow. The interview was published in the journal, Macroeconomic Dynamics, in 2000. Since William Barnett is one of the two interviewers, he now is permitted, by Cambridge University Press, to make the interview available as a 'working paper.' This interview contains some astonishing revelations about the life of Franco Modigliani, beginning with details of the circumstances regarding his move from Italy to France during the Second World War and his subsequent move to the United States.history of economic thought, Modigliani, Solow, macroeconomics, finance

Rotterdam vs Almost Ideal Models: Will the Best Demand Specification Please Stand Up?

Among the many demand specifications in the literature, the Rotterdam model and the Almost Ideal Demand System (AIDS) have particularly long histories, have been highly developed, and are often applied in consumer demand systems modeling. Using Monte Carlo techniques, we seek to determine which model performs better in terms of its ability to recover the true elasticities of demand. We derive the correct formulae for the AIDS models elasticities, when the Törnqvist or two modified versions of the Stone index are used to linearize the model. The resulting linearized AIDS are compared to the full AIDS.Rotterdam Model; Almost Ideal Model; consumer demand system; Monte Carlo study; flexible functional forms

On User Costs of Risky Monetary Assets

We extend the monetary-asset user-cost risk adjustment of Barnett, Liu, and Jensen (1997) and their risk-adjusted Divisia monetary aggregates to the case of multiple non-monetary assets and intertemporal non- separability. Our model can generate potentially larger and more accurate CCAPM user-cost risk adjustments than those found in Barnett, Liu, and Jensen (1997). We show that the risk adjustment to a monetary asset’s user cost can be measured easily by its beta. We show that any risky non-monetary asset can be used as the benchmark asset, if its rate of return is adjusted in accordance with our formula. These extensions could be especially useful, when own rates of return are subject to exchange rate risk, as in Barnett (2003).User costs, monetary aggregation, risk, intertemporal nonseparability, CCAPM, equity premium puzzle, Divisia monetary aggregates

Empirical assessment of bifurcation regions within new Keynesian models

As is well known in systems theory, the parameter space of most dynamic models is stratified into subsets, each of which supports a different kind of dynamic solution. Since we do not know the parameters with certainty, knowledge of the location of the bifurcation boundaries is of fundamental importance. Without knowledge of the location of such boundaries, there is no way to know whether the confidence region about the parameters’ point estimates might be crossed by one or more such boundaries. If there are intersections between bifurcation boundaries and a confidence region, the resulting stratification of the confidence region damages inference robustness about dynamics, when such dynamical inferences are produced by the usual simulations at the point estimates only. Recently, interest in policy in some circles has moved to New Keynesian models, which have become common in monetary policy formulations. As a result, we explore bifurcations within the class of New Keynesian models. We study different specifications of monetary policy rules within the New Keynesian functional structure. In initial research in this area, Barnett and Duzhak (2008) found a New Keynesian Hopf bifurcation boundary, with the setting of the policy parameters influencing the existence and location of the bifurcation boundary. Hopf bifurcation is the most commonly encountered type of bifurcation boundary found among economic models, since the existence of a Hopf bifurcation boundary is accompanied by regular oscillations within a neighborhood of the bifurcation boundary. Now, following a more extensive and systematic search of the parameter space, we also find the existence of Period Doubling (flip) bifurcation boundaries in the class of models. Central results in this research are our theorems on the existence and location of Hopf bifurcation boundaries in each of the considered cases. We also solve numerically for the location and properties of the Period Doubling bifurcation boundaries and their dependence upon policy-rule parameter settings.Bifurcation; dynamic general equilibrium; Hopf bifurcation; flip bifurcation; period doubling bifurcation; robustness; New Keynesian macroeconometrics; Taylor rule; inflation targeting