Search Results
Working Paper
Goods-Market Frictions and International Trade
We present a tractable framework that embeds goods-market frictions in a general equilibrium dynamic model with heterogeneous exporters and identical importers. These frictions arise because it takes time and expense for exporters and importers to meet. We show that search frictions lead to an endogenous fraction of unmatched exporters, alter the gains from trade, endogenize entry costs, and imply that the competitive equilibrium does not generally result in the socially optimal number of searching firms. Finally, ignoring search frictions results in biased estimates of the effect of tariffs ...
Report
Payment networks in a search model of money
In a simple search model of money, we study a special kind of memory that gives rise to an arrangement resembling a payment network. Specifically, we assume that agents can pay a cost to access a central database that tracks payments made and received. Incentives must be provided to agents to access the central database and to produce when they participate in this arrangement. We also study policies that can loosen these incentive constraints. In particular, we show that a "no-surcharge" rule has good incentive properties. Finally, we compare our model with that of Cavalcanti and Wallace.
Working Paper
Intermediation in Markets for Goods and Markets for Assets
We analyze agents' decisions to act as producers or intermediaries using equilibrium search theory. Extending previous analyses in various ways, we ask when intermediation emerges and study its efficiency. In one version of the framework, meant to resemble retail, middlemen hold goods, which entails (storage) costs; that model always displays uniqueness and simple transition dynamics. In another version, middlemen hold assets, which entails negative costs, that is, positive returns; that model can have multiple equilibria and complicated belief-based dynamics. These results are consistent ...
Working Paper
Search-Based Models of Money and Finance: An Integrated Approach
Many applications of search theory in monetary economics use the Shi-Trejos-Wright model, hereafter STW, while applications in finance use Duffie-Grleanu-Pederson, hereafter DGP. These approaches have much in common, and both claim to be about liquidity, but the models also differ in a fundamental way: in STW agents use assets as payment instruments when trading goods; in DGP there are no gains from exchanging goods, but agents trade because they value assets differently with goods serving as payment instruments. We develop a framework nesting the two. This clarifies the connection between ...
Report
Unemployment Benefits and Unemployment in the Great Recession: The Role of Equilibrium Effects
Equilibrium labor market theory suggests that unemployment benefit extensions affect unemployment by impacting both job search decisions by the unemployed and job creation decisions by employers. The existing empirical literature focused on the former effect only. We develop a new methodology necessary to incorporate the measurement of the latter effect. Implementing this methodology in the data, we find that benefit extensions raise equilibrium wages and lead to a sharp contraction in vacancy creation and employment and a rise in unemployment.
Working Paper
Paying Too Much? Price Dispersion in the U.S. Mortgage Market
We document wide dispersion in the mortgage rates that households pay on identical loans, and show that borrowers' financial sophistication is an important determinant of the rates obtained. We estimate a gap between the 10th and 90th percentile mortgage rate that borrowers with the same characteristics obtain for identical loans, in the same market, on the same day, of 54 basis points|equivalent to about $6,500 in upfront costs (points) for the average loan. Time-invariant lender attributes explain little of this rate dispersion, and considerable dispersion remains even within loan officer. ...
Working Paper
Capacity Choice, Monetary Trade, and the Cost of Inflation
Firms often make production decisions before meeting a buyer. We incorporate this often-overlooked fact into an otherwise standard monetary search model and show that it has important implications for the set of equilibria, efficiency, and the cost of inflation. Our model features a strategic complementarity between the buyers' ex ante choice of money balances and sellers' ex ante choice of productive capacity. When resale value of unsold inventories is high, sellers carry excess capacity and the equilibrium is unique. But, when resale value is low, there is a continuum of equilibria, all of ...
Report
Trade dynamics in the market for federal funds
We use minute-by-minute daily transaction-level payments data to document the cross-sectional and time-series behavior of the estimated prices and quantities negotiated by commercial banks in the interbank market. We study the frequency and volume of trade, the size distribution of loans, the distribution of bilateral rates, and the intraday dynamics of the reserve balances held by commercial banks. We find evidence of the importance of the liquidity provision achieved by commercial banks that act as de facto intermediaries of funds.
Working Paper
More on Middlemen: Equilibrium Entry and Efficiency in Intermediated Markets
This paper generalizes Rubinstein and Wolinsky?s model of middlemen (intermediation) by incorporating production and search costs, plus more general matching and bargaining. This allows us to study many new issues, including entry, efficiency and dynamics. In the benchmark model, equilibrium exists uniquely, and involves production and intermediation for some parameters but not others. Sometimes intermediation is essential: the market operates iff middlemen are active. If bargaining powers are set correctly equilibrium is efficient; if not there can be too much or too little economic ...
Working Paper
A Theory of Sticky Rents: Search and Bargaining with Incomplete Information
The housing rental market offers a unique laboratory for studying price stickiness. This paper is motivated by two facts: 1. Tenants? rents are remarkably sticky even though regular and expected recontracting would, by itself, suggest substantial rent flexibility. 2. Rent stickiness varies significantly across structure type; for example, detached unit rents are far stickier than large apartment unit rents. We offer the first theoretical explanation of rent stickiness that is consistent with these facts. In this theory, search and bargaining with incomplete information generates stickiness in ...