Money, Prices, Interest Rates and the Business Cycle

Abstract-The mechanisms governing the relationship of money, prices and interest rates to the business cycle are the most studied and most disputed topics in macroeconomics. In this paper, we first document key empirical aspects of this relationship. We then ask how well three benchmark rational expectations macroeconomic models-a real business cycle model, a sticky price model and a liquidity effect model-account for these central facts. While the models have diverse successses and failures, none can account for the fact that real and nominal interest rates are inverted leading indicators of real economic activity. That is, none of the models captures the post-war U.S. business cycle fact that a high real or nominal interest rate in the current quarter predicts a low level of real economic activity two to four quarters in the future. Robert G. King and Mark W. Watson* In exploring the predictions of these models, we take the stock of money to be one of several exogenous variables in the system. All of our models are capable of generating a forecasting role for money relative to real economic activity, similar to that found in the U.S. data. In the real business model, monetary changes can forecast real activity because productivity is related to many underlying sources of shocks and because these real shocks also affect the money stock. In the models with sticky prices and liquidity effects I.