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Working Paper
Shadow Bank Runs
Short-term debt is commonly used to fund illiquid assets. A conventional view asserts that such arrangements are run-prone in part because redemptions must be processed on a first-come, first-served basis. This sequential service protocol, however, appears absent in the wholesale banking sector---and yet, shadow banks appear vulnerable to runs. We explain how banking arrangements that fund fixed-cost operations using short-term debt can be run-prone even in the absence of sequential service. Interventions designed to eliminate run risk may or may not improve depositor welfare. We describe how ...
Journal Article
Is the Fed monetizing government debt?
Under this latter scenario, the Fed is not monetizing government debt ? it is simply managing the supply of the monetary base in accordance with the goals set by its dual mandate.
Journal Article
Liquidity shocks, real interest rates, and global imbalances
The author uses a simple neoclassical model to show how liquidity shocks at home and abroad can contribute to trade imbalances and low real interest rates. The author?s interpretation is consistent with Bernanke?s (2005) ?global saving glut? hypothesis.
Working Paper
Assessing the Impact of Central Bank Digital Currency on Private Banks
I investigate the theoretical impact of central bank digital currency (CBDC) on a monopolistic banking sector. The framework combines the Diamond (1965) model of government debt with the Klein (1971) and Monti (1972) model of banking. There are two main results. First, the introduction of interest-bearing CBDC increases financial inclusion, diminishing the demand for physical cash. Second, while interest-bearing CBDC reduces monopoly profit, it need not disintermediate banks in any way. CBDC may, in fact, lead to an expansion of bank deposits if CBDC competition compels banks to raise their ...
Working Paper
Welfare-enhancing inflation and liquidity premia
The Friedman rule recommends eliminating liquidity premia on nominally risk-free government debt and following a deflationary monetary policy. The desirability of this prescription in a broad class of monetary models contrasts sharply with observation. In reality, the average rate of inflation is almost always positive and long-dated government securities are–as a matter of policy–allowed to trade at a discount relative to cash, even when these securities represent risk-free claims to cash. Our paper identifies a set of empirically-plausible conditions under which a strictly positive ...
Working Paper
Moral hazard in the Diamond-Dybvig model of banking
We modify the Diamond-Dybvig model studied in Green and Lin to incorporate a self-interested banker who has a private record-keeping technology. A public record-keeping device does not exist. We find that there is a trade-off between sophisticated contracts that possess relatively good risk-sharing properties but allocate resources inefficiently for incentive reasons, and simple contracts that possess relatively poor risk-sharing properties but economize on the inefficient use of resources. While this trade-off depends on model parameters, we find that simple contracts prevail under a wide ...
Journal Article
A simple model of money and banking
This article presents a simple environment that has banks creating and lending out money. The authors define money to be any object that circulates widely as a means of payment and a bank to be an agency that simultaneously issues money and monitors investments. While their framework allows private nonbank liabilities to serve as the economy's medium of exchange, they demonstrate that the cost-minimizing structure has a bank creating liquid funds. In practice, the vast bulk of the money supply consists of private debt instruments that are issued by banks. Thus, their model goes some way in ...
Journal Article
Is It Time for Some Unpleasant Monetarist Arithmetic?
Sargent and Wallace (1981) published "Some Unpleasant Monetarist Arithmetic" 40 years ago. Their central message was that a central bank may not have the power to determine the long-run rate of inflation without fiscal support. In a policy regime where the fiscal authority is non-Ricardian, an attempt on the part of the central bank to lower inflation may end up backfiring. I develop a structural model to illustrate this result through the use of a diagram. In addition, I use the model to explain how low inflation, low interest rates, and high primary budget deficits can coexist. I also use ...
Working Paper
A theory of money and banking
The authors construct a simple environment that combines a limited communication friction and a limited information friction in order to generate a role for money and intermediation. They ask whether there is any reason to expect the emergence of a banking sector (i.e., institutions that combine the business of money creation with the business of intermediation). In their model, the unique equilibrium is characterized partly by the existence of an agent that: (1) creates money (a debt instrument that circulates as a means of payment); (2) lends it out (swapping it for less liquid forms of ...
Working Paper
The role of independence in the Green-Lin Diamond-Dybvig model
Green and Lin study a version of the Diamond-Dybvig model with a finite number of agents, independence (independent determination of each agent?s type), and sequential service. For special preferences, they show that the ex ante first-best allocation is the unique equilibrium outcome of the model with private information about types. Via a simple argument, it is shown that uniqueness of the truth-telling equilibrium holds for general preferences, and, in particular, for a constrained-efficient allocation whether first-best or not. The crucial assumption is independence.