Historical considerations, property rights, and budgets: A comment on the use of inputs by the Federal Reserve: 1. Introduction

In a recent issue of Public Choice, Allen, McCrickard, Cartwright and Delorme (1988) (hereafter AMCD) presented a modification of an earlier and well-known model of Fed behavior developed by Shughart and Tollison (1983) (hereafter S-T). A point of focus in AMCD is a discussion of the appropriate measurable variables for capturing the public choice or bureaucratic incentives faced by the monetary authority. In the end, the expense-preference based arguments of S-T, measured by System employment, were questioned and it was not rejected that monetary base decisions were driven, in part, by national debt...