913 research outputs found

    Absence-of-double-coincidence models of money: a progress report

    Get PDF
    This study describes a model built on the long-held view that the use of money as a medium of exchange is the result of an absence of double coincidence of wants. The model can account for two of the most challenging observations facing monetary theory: The disparate short-run and long-run effects of changes in the quantity of money and the coexistence of money and assets with higher rates of return. For both observations, the model's ability to provide a rich analysis depends on little more than the ingredients implicit in the absence-of-double-coincidence view.Money theory

    On the coexistence of money and higher-return assets and its social role

    Get PDF
    This paper adopts mechanism design to tackle the central issue in monetary theory, namely, the coexistence of money and higher-return assets. I describe an economy with pairwise meetings, where fiat money and risk-free capital compete as means of payment. Whenever fiat money has an essential role, any constrained-efficient allocation is such that capital commands a higher rate of return than fiat money.Monetary theory

    The economics of payments

    Get PDF
    In this paper we provide a survey of the payment literature in a unified framework. The environment is a variant of the Lagos and Wright (2005) model of monetary exchange, where some trades occur in bilateral meetings while others occur in more or less decentralized markets. We use this basic environment to introduce alternative sets of trading frictions that give rise to different payments instruments and/or payments institutions. We investigate credit economies, monetary economies, and economies in which money and credit coexist. We also study alternative assets, such as foreign exchange, capital (equity), and government liabilities, which can be used as payment instruments in conjunction with money. We introduce banks as deposit-taking institutions whose liabilities circulate in the economy. We also provide an extension in which the process of the settlement of debt for money is modeled and the potential social costs of settlement are characterized. Finally, we investigate government policy responses to the social costs introduced by various trading frictions.Payment systems ; Money

    Recent developments in monetary economics: a summary of the 2004 Workshop on Money, Banking, and Payments

    Get PDF
    We provide a summary and an overview of the papers presented at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland’s 2004 Workshop on Money, Banking, and Payments, held during the weeks of August 3-7 and August 23-27, 2004.Monetary policy ; Monetary theory ; Banks and banking ; Payment systems

    Debt enforcement and the return on money

    Get PDF
    The rate-of-return-dominance puzzle asks why low-return assets, like fiat money, are used in actual economies given that risk-free higher-return assets are available. As long as this question remains unresolved, most conclusions from monetary models which arbitrarily restrict the marketability properties of alternative assets to make money valuable are difficult to assess. In this paper, I provide a framework in which fiat money has value in equilibrium, even though a higher-return asset is available and there are neither restrictions nor transaction costs in using it. I suggest that the use of money is associated with frictions underlying debt contracts. In an environment where full enforcement is not feasible, the actual rate of return on assets is determined by incentives eliciting voluntary debt repayment. I show that the inflation rate or, more generally, the depreciation rate of an asset in which debts are denominated may function as a commitment device. As a result, money is used in equilibrium and the optimal inflation rate is positive.Money, Inflation, Debt Enforcement, Banking.

    Liquidity in frictional asset markets

    Get PDF
    On November 14-15, 2008, the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland hosted a conference on “Liquidity in Frictional Asset Markets.” In this paper we review the literature on asset markets with trading frictions in both finance and monetary theory using a simple search-theoretic model, and we discuss the papers presented at the conference in the context of this literature. We will show the diversity of topics covered in this literature, e.g., the dynamics of housing and credit markets, the functioning of payment systems, optimal monetary policy and the cost of inflation, the role of banks, the effect of informational frictions on asset trading.Liquidity (Economics)

    Endogenous heterogeneity

    Get PDF
    This paper studies a Lagos and Wright economy with endogenous heterogeneity. In particular, the distribution of impatience (denoted by beta ) across agents converges pointwise to a degenerate distribution, the persistence of a delta-measure of agents with higher impatience, for some delta > 0, notwithstanding. As a consequence, a non zero measure set of agents holding idle money balances exists in the absence of any randomness nor ex post heterogeneity. Hence, examples of LW economies where the efficiency of equilibrium allocations is improved by letting agents hold interest bearing assets are robust. The results also show that coexistence of money with bonds is not ruled out by pointwise convergence of the distribution of money over the set of agents to a constant function. More exactly, the distribution of money may converge pointwise but not uniformly

    Coalition-Proof Trade and the Friedman Rule in the Lagos-Wright Model

    Get PDF
    The Lagos-Wright model -- a monetary model in which pairwise meetings alternate in time with a centralized meeting -- has been extensively analyzed, but always using particular trading protocols. Here, trading protocols are replaced by two alternative notions of implementability: one that allows only individual defections and one that also allows cooperative defections in meetings. It is shown that the first-best allocation is implementable under the stricter notion with- out taxation if people are sufficiently patient. And, if people are free to skip the centralized meeting, then lump-sum taxation used to pay interest on money does not enlarge the set of implementable allocations.

    A monetary approach to asset liquidity

    Get PDF
    This paper offers a monetary theory of asset liquidity—one that emphasizes the role of assets in payment arrangements—and it explores the implications of the theory for the relationship between assets’ intrinsic characteristics and liquidity, and the effects of monetary policy on asset prices and welfare. The environment is a random-matching economy where fiat money coexists with a real asset, and no restrictions are imposed on payment arrangements. The liquidity of the real asset is endogenized by introducing an informational asymmetry in regard to its fundamental value.Money ; Payment systems ; Liquidity (Economics)
    corecore