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Discussion Paper
Lessons from the History of the U.S. Regulatory Perimeter
Banking organizations in the United States have long been subject to two broad categories of regulatory standards. The first is permissive: a "positive" grant of rights and privileges, typically via a charter for a corporate entity, to engage in the business of banking.
Working Paper
The effects of open market operations in a model of intermediation and growth
We examine a standard model of capital accumulation in which spatial separation and limited communication create a role for money and shocks to portfolio needs create a role for banks. In this context we examine the existence, multiplicity, and dynamical properties of monetary equilibria with positive nominal interest rates. Moderate levels of risk aversion can lead to the existence of multiple monetary steady states, all of which can be approached from a given set of initial conditions. In addition, even if there is a unique monetary steady state, monetary equilibria can be indeterminate, ...
Journal Article
Jobless recoveries and the wait-and-see hypothesis
In January 2005, after more than three years of sluggish employment growth, the U.S. economy finally recovered the jobs lost during the 2001 recession. Baffled by such a delayed rebound in payrolls, many speculated about the cause. Inevitably, observers compared the 2001 and 1991 recoveries, both widely considered to have been jobless. Schreft and Singh showed previously that one common feature of the first year of the jobless recoveries was the greater use of just-in-time employment practices. They also speculated that the greater availability of just-in-time employment practices contributed ...
Journal Article
Credit aggregates from the flow of funds accounts
Conference Paper
Financial fragility with rational and irrational exuberance
Working Paper
A model of financial fragility
This paper presents a dynamic, stochastic game-theoretic model of financial fragility. The model has two essential features. First, interrelated portfolios and payment commitments forge financial linkages among agents. Second, iid shocks to investment projects? operations at a single date cause some projects to fail. Investors who experience losses from project failures reallocate their portfolios, thereby breaking some linkages. In the Pareto-efficient symmetric equilibrium studied, two related types of financial crises can occur in response. One occurs gradually as defaults spread, causing ...
Working Paper
Liquidity constraints in commercial loan markets with imperfect information and imperfect competition
This paper presents a simple general equilibrium model of the commercial loan market in which liquidity constraints arise endogenously because of imperfect information and imperfect competition. The information and market structure generate a discriminatory interest rate schedule and loan size restrictions, which we interpret as liquidity constraint phenomena. The model's predictions are consistent with actual lending policies observed in the commercial loan industry. Further, the lender and all borrowers are at least as well off under this solution as they would be if faced with any single ...
Working Paper
How and why do consumers choose their payment methods?
This essay provides an overview of the literature on consumer payment behavior. It considers the state of our understanding of how and why consumers choose their payment methods and what is needed to make more headway in understanding consumer payment decisions. It closes by discussing the policy issues that require that we make progress with payments research.
Working Paper
Phillips curves, monetary policy, and a labor market transmission mechanism
This paper develops a general equilibrium monetary model with performance incentives to study the inflation-unemployment relationship. A long-run downward-sloping Phillips curve can exist with perfectly anticipated inflation because workers? incentive to exert effort depend on financial market returns. Consequently, higher inflation rates can reduce wages and stimulate employment. An upward-sloping or vertical Phillips Curve can arise instead, depending on agents? risk aversion and the possibility of capital formation. Welfare might be higher away from the Friedman rule and with a central ...