Long-Run Monetary Neutrality and Contemporary Policy Analysis

Arguments are developed concerning a number of topics including long-run monetary neutrality, superneutrality, the natural-rate hypothesis, the quantity theory of money, the equation of exchange, the Fisher equation, and purchasing power parity. These are basic, fundamental topics that all students of monetary economics refer to frequently, but there is evidently considerable disagreement concerning their exact nature. Some of the disagreement has likely been generated by the recent practice by monetary economists of conducting monetary policy analysis in models that include no mention of any monetary variable such as M1 or the monetary base-thereby reflecting the actual policy practice of most central banks. It is argued that these models are consistent in most important ways with highly traditional monetary analysis. More generally, relationships among the various topics are developed and the validity of empirical tests (e.g., cointegration tests) relating to several of the topics are reconsidered.