When agents are liquidity constrained, two options exist - sell assets or borrow. We compare the allocations arising in two economies: in one, agents can sell government (outside) bonds and in the other they can borrow by issuing (inside) bonds. All transactions are voluntary, implying no...

Evaluation of the financial costs of a Eurozone breakup depends critically on the interpretation of TARGET balances. While it has been argued that TARGET claims in the Eurozone can be written off without incurring any losses on the claimants as the value of fiat money is independent of the...

In this paper, we see how much the average monthly frequency of price changes ties down the behavior of firms in steady-state in terms of the average length of price-spells across firms. We use the UK CPI data at the aggregate and sectoral level and find that the actual mean is about twice the...

As shown in Sinn and Wollmershäuser (2012a), during the European balance-of-payments crisis, inter-governmental credit and Target credit granted by core-country central banks have replaced private international capital flows in financing the crisis countries' current account deficits, and even...

This paper provides a framework for modeling the risk-taking channel of monetary policy, the mechanism how financial intermediaries' incentives for liquidity transformation are affected by the central bank's reaction to financial crisis. Anticipating central bank's reaction to liquidity stress...

The Friedman rule states that steady-state welfare is maximized when there is deflation at the real rate of interest. Recent work by Khan et al (2003) uses a richer model but still finds deflation optimal. In an otherwise standard new Keynesian model we show that, if households have hyperbolic...

This paper focuses on the relation between external imbalances and domestic money and credit growth in the euro area. We compute money and credit overhang both for the euro area as a whole and for individual member countries. Our results show that both aggregate money and credit overhang have...

A sketch of the International Monetary Fund's 70-year history reveals an institution that has reinvented itself over time along multiple dimensions. This history is primarily consistent with a “demand driven” theory of institutional change, as the needs of its clients and the type of crisis...