The Stock of Money and Investment in the United States, 1897-1966
The last decade has seen an array of empirical studies for testing possible associations between the stock of money and relevant flow variables, such as consumption and income. These studies originated with the comparison by Milton Friedman and David Meiselman between the relative stability of monetary velocity and the autonomous expenditure multiplier; and they include the comments, criticisms, and further investigations the F-M study has provoked [1], [2], [4], [51. [6], [71, [8], [9]. For good reason, the original studv by Friedman and Meiselman uses consumption rather than income as the dependent variable in estimating the relative stability of velocity and the multiplier [4, pp. 175-76]. While a persistently high relationship between the stock of money and consumption is found, the Quantity Theory of Money nonetheless hypothesizes more generally that the stock of money is a major factor in the determination of total money expenditures.' A brief supplementary test is included in the F-M study using income as the dependent variable. However, no explicit examination of gross private domestic investment as a dependent spending variable is undertaken. Net private domestic investment is included in the F-M definition of autonomous expenditures for testing the stability of the multiplier. Since consumption correlates better with the money stock than does total expenditure-income, Friedman and Meiselman c clude: