The material in this book reflects, in many respects, the culmination of several years of research regarding the measurement of monetary policy. On all the issues addressed in the text, I have thus attempted to provide a perspective of the type that can only be gained from "living with" a topic over an extended time horizon. I have often said that I came to understand the monetary indicators literature only after having written dozens of papers on the subject. This statement may seem a bit trite, but I feel certain that anyone who has waded through this morass (or at least tried to) can fully empathize and recognize the grain of truth therein. It is my sincere hope that the synthesis given in the work will calm the fears and anxieties that often (and understandably) plague beginners in this field. In settling down to the process of "pulling together" this manuscript, I was surprised to find the ease and consistency with which various topics, explored at widely diverse times and in no particular order, meshed into a unified whole. I attempted to write the book in a manner that would simultaneously be generally comprehensible to students (particularly at the graduate level) and to practitioners desiring a relatively thorough overview of the indicators literature and yet be of value to scholars desiring to explore (and hopefully advance) this field.

The material in this book reflects, in many respects, the culmination of several years of research regarding the measurement of monetary policy. On all the issues addressed in the text, I have thus attempted to provide a perspective of the type that can only be gained from "living with" a topic over an extended time horizon. I have often said that I came to understand the monetary indicators literature only after having written dozens of papers on the subject. This statement may seem a bit trite, but I feel certain that anyone who has waded through this morass (or at least tried to) can fully empathize and recognize the grain of truth therein. It is my sincere hope that the synthesis given in the work will calm the fears and anxieties that often (and understandably) plague beginners in this field. In settling down to the process of "pulling together" this manuscript, I was surprised to find the ease and consistency with which various topics, explored at widely diverse times and in no particular order, meshed into a unified whole. I attempted to write the book in a manner that would simultaneously be generally comprehensible to students (particularly at the graduate level) and to practitioners desiring a relatively thorough overview of the indicators literature and yet be of value to scholars desiring to explore (and hopefully advance) this field.

This book is the first volume of the International Series in Economic Model ing, a series designed to summarize current issues and procedures in applied modeling within various fields of economics and to offer new or alternative approaches to prevailing problems. In selecting the subject area for the first volume, we were attracted by the area to which applied modeling efforts are increasingly being drawn, regional economics and its associated subfields. Applied modeling is a broad rubric even when the focus is restricted to econometric modeling issues. Regional econometric modeling has posted a record of rapid growth during the last two decades and has become an established field of research and application. Econometric models of states and large urban areas have become commonplace, but the existence of such models does not signal an end to further development of regional econ ometric methods and models. Many issues such as structural specification, level of geographic detail, data constraints, forecasting integrity, and syn thesis with other regional modeling techniques will continue to be sources of concern and will prompt further research efforts. The chapters of this volume reflect many of these issues. A brief synopsis of each contribution is provided below: Richard Weber offers an overview of regional econometric models by discussing theoretical specification, nature of variables, and ultimate useful ness of such models. For an illustration, Weber describes the specification of the econometric model of New Jersey."