We investigate the role of settlement in a dynamic model of a payment system where the ability of participants to perform certain welfare-improving transactions is subject to random and unobservable shocks. In the absence of settlement, the full information first-best allocation cannot be...

Clearinghouses support financial trades by keeping records of transactions and by providing liquidity through short-term credit that participants clear periodically. We study efficient clearing arrangements for exchanges, where traders must clear with a clearinghouse, and for over-the-counter...

We study how the efficient choice of contract enforcement interacts with the efficient allocation of capital in a simple production economy. Contract enforcement makes trade possible but requires an aggregate investment of capital that is no longer available for production. In such an economy,...

We study credible information transmission by a benevolent short-lived central bank. When externalities create a wedge between private and social welfare, the central bank has an incentive to misreport its information. Information transmission through monetary policy creates a distortion, thus,...

A blockchain is a digital ledger that keeps track of a record of ownership without the need for a designated party to update and enforce changes to the record. The updating of the ledger is done directly by the users of the blockchain and is traditionally governed by a proof-of-work (PoW)...