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Conference Paper
Inflation, financial markets and capital formation
Working Paper
Barriers to international capital flows: who should erect them and how big should they be?
Until recently, the trend in world capital markets has been toward increasing globalization. Recent events in Latin America and Asia have caused many in policy-making circles to question whether this trend should be wholly, or at least partially, reversed. It is commonly argued that?at a minimum?countries should be given the discretion to erect such barriers, at least in certain circumstances. Recent events, then, have forced a rethinking of the desirability of unrestricted world capital flows. The general presumption appears to be that the "victims" of highly volatile capital flows should ...
Working Paper
Intermediaries and payments instruments
We study an economy in which intermediaries have incentives to issue circulating liabilities as part of an equilibrium. We show that, with arbitrarily small transactions costs, only the liabilities of intermediaries will circulate, and not those of other private sector agents. Therefore, our model connects intermediation activity with the issuance of payments media, a connection that has not been made in earlier literature. We also describe conditions under which equilibrium outcomes may be volatile when private liabilities circulate. Finally, we use our model to suggest a resolution of the ...
Working Paper
Private and public circulating liabilities
Changes in the legal and technological environment in the U.S. have created the possibility of private banknote issue, or its electronic equivalent. We wish to understand the implications of this possibility for economic performance. Accordingly, we construct and analyze a dynamic general equilibrium model in which privately-issued liabilities may circulate, either by themselves, or alongside a stock of outside money. In each case we provide results on the existence and multiplicity of equilibria, and we characterize local dynamics in a neighborhood of a steady state. Our results support ...
Working Paper
The value of inside and outside money
We study dynamic economies in which agents may have incentives to hold both privately-issued (a.k.a. inside) and publicly-issued (a.k.a. outside) circulating liabilities as part of an equilibrium. Our analysis emphasizes spatial separation and limited communication as frictions that motivate monetary exchange. We isolate conditions under which a combination of inside and outside money does and does not allow the economy to achieve a first-best allocation of resources. We also study the extent to which the use of private circulating liabilities alone, or the use of public circulating ...
Working Paper
The value of inside and outside money: expanded version
We study dynamic economies in which agents may have incentives to hold both privately-issued (a.k.a. inside) and publicly-issued (a.k.a. outside) circulating liabilities as part of an equilibrium. Our analysis emphasizes spatial separation and limited communication as frictions that motivate monetary exchange. We isolate conditions under which a combination of inside and outside money does and does not allow the economy to achieve a first-best allocation of resources. We also study the extent to which the use of private circulating liabilities alone, or the use of public circulating ...
Journal Article
Is there a "credit channel" for monetary policy? (commentary)
Working Paper
On government credit programs
Credit rationing is a common feature of most developing economies. In response to it, the governments of these countries often operate extensive credit programs and lend, either directly or indirectly, to the private sector. We analyze the macroeconomic consequences of a typical government credit program in a small open economy. We show that such programs increase long-run production if the economy is in a development trap and that such programs often lead to endogenously arising aggregate volatility. On the other hand, they may eliminate certain indeterminacies created by endogenous credit ...
Working Paper
Socially excessive bankruptcy costs and the benefits of interest rate ceilings on loans
The authors study the capital accumulation and welfare implications of ceilings on loan interest rates in a dynamic general equilibrium model. Binding ceilings on loan rates reduce the probability of bankruptcy. Lower bankruptcy rates result in lower bankruptcy and liquidation costs. The authors state conditions under which the resources freed by this cost-saving result increase the steady state capital stock, reduce steady state credit rationing, and raise the steady state welfare of all agents. The authors also argue that the conditions stated are likely to be satisfied in practice. ...
Working Paper
Inflation and financial market performance
An exploration of the cross-sectional relationship between inflation and an array of indicators of financial market conditions, using time-averaged data covering several decades and a large number of countries.