An introduction to the special issue on modern macroeconomic theory.

This article reviews macroeconomic models with heterogeneous households. A key question for the relevance of these models concerns the degree to which markets are complete. This is because the existence of complete markets imposes restrictions on (i) how much heterogeneity matters for aggregate...

The key ideas for adding financial market frictions in general equilibrium models are not new in macroeconomics. However, it is only with the recent crisis that the profession has fully recognized the importance of financial markets for business cycle fluctuations. In this article I review some...

The key ideas for adding financial market frictions in general equilibrium models are not new in macroeconomics. However, it is only with the recent crisis that the profession has fully recognized the importance of financial markets for business cycle fluctuations. In this article I review some...

An introduction to the special issue on modern macroeconomic theory.

Recent discussions of exchange rate determination have emphasized the possible role of foreign direct investment in influencing exchange rate behavior. Yet, there are few existing models of multinational enterprises (MNEs) and endogenous exchange rates. This article demonstrates that the entry...

In this article, I discuss the broad influence of Diamond and Dybvig (1983) in the field of money and banking. My review is centered on two aspects of their sharp concept of liquidity when doing mechanism design in a simple economy with a single resource constraint. It calls into question an old...

This special issue of the Economic Quarterly is dedicated to the 1983 model of bank runs developed by Douglas Diamond and Philip Dybvig. Their model has been a workhorse of banking research over the last 25 years and during the recent financial crisis it has been one that researchers and...

Despite the cogent criticism that "bailing out" insolvent firms creates moral hazard, bailouts often occur in the aftermath of bank runs and other financial crises. In an environment where it is economically efficient to make illiquid investments, and where investors have private information...

This article uses a class of models of money and the payments system to inform an analysis of "mobile banking" in the context of the rapid expansion of M-PESA, a new technology in Kenya that allows payments via mobile phones (even without any access to a bank account), and currently reaches...