Monetary aggregates

Monetary aggregates measure the amount of money circulating in an economy. National series are loaded as national currency stock series. Mostly, these are end-of-month. A few countries compile data more frequently e.g. weekly which enables them to calculate “average for the month” data. Series are also presented in index form, calculated by OECD. Monetary aggregates are always expressed in current price (“nominal” terms) because the amount of money required by an economy reflects current levels of economic activity and price. Here they are presented both as stock series in national currency and as indices in the OECD standard base year. There are many monetary aggregates. Statistically, they are items in the balance sheet of the banking system. They may be taken from either side (since credit series, which are banking assets, are sometimes labeled monetary aggregates) but are normally taken from the liabilities side. In the balance sheet the liabilities items are ordered, starting with very narrow definitions of money (such as notes and coin) and gradually widening through various types of bank accounts (e.g. sight deposits, term deposits) to very board items which include sophisticated products like financial derivatives. In other words, narrow money measures cover highly liquid forms of money (money as a means of exchange) while broad money includes the less liquid forms (money as a store of value). There were no internationally recognised standards for compiling monetary aggregates until the IMF published its Monetary and Financial Statistics Manual in 2000 (Monetary and Financial Statistics Manua). Cross-country comparability suffered as a result. Now, notably, the European Central Bank’s framework for constructing Euro area monetary aggregates is consistent with IMF principles and non-euro EU countries are also required to report data to ECB according to the framework as are EU candidate countries as part of their application process. A useful IMF link for national methodologies is IMF methodologies. Here is used a general definition of narrow money – M1 is: currency i.e. banknotes and coins, plus overnight deposits. M2 is: the sum of M1, deposits with an agreed maturity of up to two years and deposits redeemable at notice of up to three months. And broad money – M3 is: the sum of M2, repurchase agreements, money market fund shares/units and debt securities up to two years.

The narrow and broad money indices are calculated by OECD from the national stock series. Country indices are calculated by first estimating period averages where the country only supplies end-of-period stock data. The figure for the end of the previous period is taken as the opening stock for the current period. The arithmetic average of the two is the estimate for the period average. These, or true monthly averages where available, are divided by the annual average of the monthly data in the base period to obtain the index.

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Statistics and Data Directorate