Is the Demand for Euro Area M3 Stable?

Abstract

This paper re-examines two data issues concerning euro area money demand: aggregation of national data and measurement of the own rate. The main purpose is to study if euro area money demand is subject to parameter non-constancies using formal tests rather than informal diagnostics. As a complement to inference based on asymptotics we perform small-scale bootstraps. The empirical evidence supports the existence of a stable long-run relationship between money and output and that the co-integration space is constant over time. However, the interest rate semi-elasticities of money demand are imprecisely estimated. Conditional on the co-integration relations the remaining parameters of the system appear to be constant. We also examine the relevance of stock prices for money demand and find that our measure does not matter for the long-run relations, but may be useful in forecasting exercises. Finally, the conclusions are robust for the aggregation method and the choice of sample. JEL Classification: C22, C32, E41