We document a broad-based trend in rising cash holdings of firms across major industrialized countries over the last two decades, a trend that is most pronounced for firms engaged strongly in R and D activities. Our contributions to the literature are twofold. First, we develop a simple model...

Monetary policy space remains constrained by the lower bound in many countries, limiting the policy options available to address future deflationary shocks. The existence of cash prevents central banks from cutting interest rates much below zero. In this paper, we consider the practical...

While there is growing evidence of persistent or even permanent output losses from financial crises, the causes remain unclear. One candidate is intangible capital - a rising driver of economic growth that, being non-pledgeable as collateral, is vulnerable to financial frictions. By sheltering...

This paper considers the interaction between the private sector, the monetary authority, and the fiscal authority, and concludes that unrestricted central bank independence may not be an optimal way to collect seigniorage revenues or stabilize supply shocks. Moreover, the paper shows that the...

In the past decades, much work has been geared toward solving the problem of time inconsistency in monetary policy and analyzing the coordination problem between fiscal and monetary policy. This paper provides a review of the theoretical background to these theories, while also focusing on their...

This paper provides a theory model of trade finance to explain the ""great trade collapse."" The model shows that, first, the riskiness of international transactions rises relative to domestic transactions during economic downturns, and second, the exclusive use of a letter of credit in...