Optimal Policy in OG Models

In the present paper general stationary overlapping generations economies with many commodities in every period and many different consumers in every generation are considered. A government maximizes an utilitarian social welfare function, that is the sum of weighted averages of utilities for generations, through fiscal policy, i.e. monetary transfers and taxes. Both situations with and without time discounting are considered. It is shown that if the discount factor is sufficiently close to one then the optimal policy stabilizes the economy, i.e. the equilibrium path has the turnpike property. Moreover the fiscal policy is shown to be time-consistent.overlapping generations economies; economic policy; turnpike property; discounting

The Role of Money in Two Alternative Models: When is the Friedman Rule Optimal, and Why?

In models of money with an infinitely-lived representative agent (ILRA models), the optimal monetary policy is almost always the Friedman rule. Overlapping generations (OG) models are different: in this paper, we study how they are different, and why. We investigate the welfare properties of monetary policy in a simple OG model under two different types of money demand specifications and under two alternative assumptions about the generational timing of taxes for money retirement. We find that the Friedman rule is generally not the policy that maximizes steady-state utility. We conclude that the key difference between ILRA and OG monetary models is that in the latter, the standard method for constructing a monetary regime causes transactions involving money to become intergenerational transfers. Overlapping generations are different in this regard; we study how they are different and why.Friedman rule; optimal monetary policy; overlapping generations model; money; intergenerational transfers

Understanding the Roles of Money, or When is the Friedman Rule Optimal, and Why?

In this paper, we study the optimal steady state monetary policy in overlapping generations (OG) models. In contrast to economies populated by infinitely-lived representative agents (ILRA), the Friedman Rule is frequently not the policy that maximizes the welfare of two-period lived consumers. Our principal goal is to understand why the Friedman Rule is suboptimal in OG economies. To this end, we construct a mechanism-specifically, a monetary policy regime-that renders money useless in the sense of executing intergenerational transfers. Under this governmental regime, we show that the optimal monetary policy is the Friedman Rule. Our finding is robust to alternative rationales for valued fiat money; specifically, whether money is held voluntarily or involuntarily

Loan maturity aggregation in interbank lending networks obscures mesoscale structure and economic functions

Since the 2007-2009 financial crisis, substantial academic effort has been dedicated to improving our understanding of interbank lending networks (ILNs). Because of data limitations or by choice, the literature largely lacks multiple loan maturities. We employ a complete interbank loan contract dataset to investigate whether maturity details are informative of the network structure. Applying the layered stochastic block model of Peixoto (2015) and other tools from network science on a time series of bilateral loans with multiple maturity layers in the Russian ILN, we find that collapsing all such layers consistently obscures mesoscale structure. The optimal maturity granularity lies between completely collapsing and completely separating the maturity layers and depends on the development phase of the interbank market, with a more developed market requiring more layers for optimal description. Closer inspection of the inferred maturity bins associated with the optimal maturity granularity reveals specific economic functions, from liquidity intermediation to financing. Collapsing a network with multiple underlying maturity layers or extracting one such layer, common in economic research, is therefore not only an incomplete representation of the ILN's mesoscale structure, but also conceals existing economic functions. This holds important insights and opportunities for theoretical and empirical studies on interbank market functioning, contagion, stability, and on the desirable level of regulatory data disclosure

Sub-Optimality of the Friedman Rule in Townsends Turnpike and Limited Communication Models of money: Do finite lives and initial dates matter?

We construct an economy populated with infinitely-lived agents and show that the Friedman rule is suboptimal. We do that by showing that our economy and an overlapping generations model in which the Friedman rule is known to be suboptimal are homomorphic. We also discuss the importance of whether or not the economy has an initial date for this result.Friedman rule; monetary policy; overlapping generations; turnpike.