Page:Stabilizing the dollar, Fisher, 1920.djvu/206

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(5) The frequency of calculating the index number, which means the frequency of adjusting the dollar's weight, depends on a number of circumstances, including the time required to calculate the index number and that required for the effect of each adjustment to be felt.

The time required for calculation should be trifling. Judging from the expeditiousness with which some of the commercial index numbers are now calculated, and with which our Government weather maps are published, I believe that, with the aid of the telegraph, an index number could easily be calculated within two or three days after the date for which the prices are quoted.

How quickly the index number responds to a change in the money supply has never been fully demonstrated. Professor J. Shield Nicholson, plotting English war currency and index numbers of prices at quarterly intervals, found that the behavior of the price level seemed to correspond to that of the