On Measuring the Nearness of Near-Moneys: Comment
This paper is a review of an attempt by V. K. Chetty to nmeasure the relative amount of monetary services rendered by nearmoney assets such as time deposits at commercial banks, deposits at mutual savings banks, and savings and loan association shares. If such a measure could be found, then one could use it to construct a better money supply total; that is, one which would more accuratelv measure the total amount of monetary services available in the economy at any point of time. For example, if it could be established that a dollar of savings and loan shares (SL) rendered the same amount of monetary services as fifty cents of money (M) then by adding 50 percent of the value of outstanding SL to the conventional money supply, we would arrive at an adjusted money supply (Ma) which would take into account the monetary services of SL as well as M. The Ma would then measure the amount of M alone it would take to provide the same monetary services as the actual combination of M and SL in existence. Interest in constructing an Ma along these lines has been expressed by several writers.1 Their interest stems from the belief that there exists a stable relationship between the level of income, properly defined, and the desired level of monetary services. If this is the case, then a more accurate measure of the total amount of monetary services available in the economy would enable one to more accurately predict the level of income. Chetty's attempt to construct an Ma will be reviewed in two sections. In Section I, the theory that Chetty uses to construct Ma is examined, and it is shown that Chetty's theoretical presentation contains an error. Moreover, even if the theory is corrected along the lines suggested by Chetty in a footnote, it would still be impossible to estimate the monetary services of near-money assets since these cannot be separated from the other nonmonetary services rendered by these assets. In Section II, Chetty's empirical results are examined. Because Chetty cannot separate the monetary from the nonmonetary services of near-money assets, he is led to assign weights to near-money assets which are greater than one, implying that these assets yield a larger amount of monetary services per dollar than does money itself.