Financial Intermediaries and Transaction Costs

We present an overlapping generations model with spatial separation and agents who face unsystematic liquidity risk. In a pure exchange economy, agents engage in life cycle portfolio rebalancing. In an intermediated economy, intergenerational banks or mutual funds cater to diversified clienteles so as to avoid rebalancing transactions. In equilibrium, these intermediaries pay redemptions with portfolio income and never sell secondary assets. We also find that the pure exchange economy has a downward sloping yield curve and is inherently cyclical.