Working Paper Series no. 131: Excess Monetary Liquidity and Asset Prices

Abstract

The recent rise of excess liquidity in the United States and in the euro zone did not result in a resurgence of inflation. Excess liquidity, rather than heading towards the market of consumer goods, could have moved towards the asset markets. In the data covering the period going from 1980 to 2004 and relative to the United States, the euro zone, the United Kingdom and Japan, there's no element pointing out an effect of excess liquidity on asset prices: there is no common trend in asset prices, vector models taking into account the excess liquidity developments do not explain the movements of asset prices, and the extension of the quantitative equation of money to transactions on assets does not stabilize the money velocity.

Sylvain Gouteron and Daniel Szpiro
September 2005

Classification JEL : E31, E44, E52.

Keywords : Liquidity, Asset Prices, Money, Real Estate, Quantitative Equation.