Optimal Bank Regulation and Monetary Policy

A unified model of monetary policy and bank regulation is presented. In accordance with modern banking theory, banks not only intermediate loans and deposits but also provide a financial service affecting aggregate output. Optimal parameter settings for monetary and regulatory policy are derived. New results are that monetary policy affects the expected level as well as the variance of output, bank regulation should change continually in response to the state of the economy, and bank regulation and monetary policy should be tightly coordinated. This last result has important implications for the institutional arrangements for conducting regulatory and monetary policy.

Federal Regulation and Aggregate Economic Growth

We introduce a new measure of the extent of federal regulation in the U.S. and use it to investigate the relationship between federal regulation and macroeconomic performance. We find that regulation has statistically and economically significant effects on aggregate output and the factors that produce it–total factor productivity (TFP), physical capital, and labor. Regulation has caused substantial reductions in the growth rates of both output and TFP and has had effects on the trends in capital and labor that vary over time in both sign and magnitude. Regulation also affects deviations about the trends in output and its factors of production, and the effects differ across dependent variables. Regulation changes the way output is produced by changing the mix of inputs. Changes in regulation and marginal tax rates offer a straightforward explanation for the productivity slowdown of the 1970s. Key Words: Regulation; macroeconomic performance; economic growth; productivity slowdown

The demand for currency substitution

nem

Monies and Banking

This paper investigates the demand by households for transaction services from the financial sector. Households buy several goods with any of several media of exchange. The households choose the medium of exchange to use for each type of good, how much of each type of medium to hold, and the frequencies of commodity and financial transactions. The variety of financial services demanded by a household depends positively on the household's income, with households at the bottom of the income distribution demanding no financial services at all. Household demand for financial services also depends on how the household allocates its income among the available goods. Households with the same income but different allocations will demand different mixes of financial services. These results have several implications for the organization of the banking market, especially the location of bank branches, and the availability of banking services in different areas.

The Demand for Currency Substitution

A transactions model of the demand for multiple media of exchange is developed. Some results are expected, and others are both new and surprising. There are both extensive and intensive margins to currency substitution, and inflation may affect the two margins differently, leading to subtle incentives to adopt or abandon a substitute currency. Variables not previously considered in the literature affect currency substitution in complex and somewhat unexpected ways. In particular, the level of income and the composition of consumption expenditures are important, and they interact with the other variables in the model. Independent empirical work provides support for the theory.Currency substitution, Dollarization

Is There an Optimal Size for the Financial Sector

This paper derives the optimal size of the financial sector using a general equilibrium framework that is an extension of Holmstrom and Tirole's 1997 paper. We show that the financial sector has a unique optimal size relative to the size of the economy as a whole. Creating and maintaining this sector requires diversion of some physical capital from production of output to monitoring that production. However, the efficiency gain in output production brought about by monitoring warrants the diversion. It is also found that the optimal size of the financial sector is independent of the state of the economy and does not vary over the business cycle.financial sector, intermediation theory, financial institutions

Coping with unemployment

Unemployment

A perspective on stagflation

Inflation (Finance) ; Unemployment

The unemployment rate: time to give it a rest?

Unemployment