Treasury bills and other near-money assets provide owners with liquidity service benefits that are reflected in prices in the form of a liquidity premium. I relate time variation in this liquidity premium to changes in the opportunity cost of money: The liquidity service benefits of near-money...

We develop a theory that rationalizes the use of a dominant unit of account in an economy. Agents enter into non-contingent contracts with a variety of business partners. Trade unfolds sequentially in credit chains and is subject to random matching. By using a dominant unit of account, agents...

We study models incorporating money, household production, and investment in housing. Inflation, as a tax on market activity, encourages substitution into household production, and thus investment in household capital. Hence, inflation increases the (appropriately deflated) value of the housing...

This paper compares how cash and in-kind transfers affect local prices. Both types of transfers increase the demand for normal goods, but only in-kind transfers also increase supply. Hence, in-kind transfers should lead to lower prices than cash transfers, which helps consumers at the expense of...

This paper studies why the General Theory had so much impact on the economics profession through the 1960s, why that impact began to wane in the 1970s, and why many economic policymakers cling to many of the tenets of the General Theory. We discuss three key elements along these lines, including...

We review theoretical explanations for in-kind transfers in light of the limited empirical evidence. After reviewing the traditional paternalistic arguments, we consider explanations based on imperfect information and self-targeting. We then discuss the large literature on in-kind programs as a...

An indexed unit of account is a money analogue, used to express prices; the unit's" purchasing power is defined by an index. Indexed units of account are not true money in that" they are not used as a medium of exchange. The first successful indexed unit of account Unidad de Fomento (UF) has...

We present an infinite horizon model with capital in which fiat money and barter are two competing means of payment. Fiat money has value because barter is limited by the extent of a double coincidence of wants. The pattern of exchange generally involves both money and barter. We find that the...

The classical and early neoclassical economists knew that the essential function of money was its role as a medium of exchange; Recently, this idea has been formalized using search-theoretic noncooperative equilibrium models of the exchange process. The goal of this paper is to use a simple model...

A price dispersion equation is tested with data from the German hyper-inflation. The equation is derived from a version of Lucas' (1973) and Barro's (1976) partial information-localized market models. In this extension, different excess demand elasticities across commodities imply a testable...