It is well known that models in which money is used as a medium of exchange to lubricate trading, frictions display multiplicity of equilibria. I show that the amount of activity varies as the value of money differs across these equilibria when production opportunities involve random fixed...

This article presents a general equilibrium model in which middlemen emerge to facilitate trade in an environment of idiosyncratic tastes and heterogeneous goods. The gains to the traders can be measured along three dimensions: the rate of production, the time-preference losses generated by the...