SECTORAL MONEY DEMAND - A COINTEGRATION APPROACH

The major emphasis in previous money demand studies has been at the aggregate level, with little systematic attention paid to sectoral differences in money holding behavior. This paper attempts to address the latter issue by focusing on more homogeneous subgroups to gauge money holding patterns. We apply cointegration theory to identify long-run money demand functions for the household and business sectors of the U.S. economy. In general, our results, which are based on the 1960-1990 U.S. monetary experience, suggest substantial sectoral divergences in long-run relationships. In particular, the household sector reveals more stable relationships. The business sector indicates strong interest elasticities, which are found to be negligible for the household case. These findings are invariant to alternative money definitions and for different sample periods.