We present an incomplete markets model to understand the costs and benefits of increasing government debt when an increased demand for safety pushes the natural rate of interest below zero. A higher demand for safe assets causes the ZLB to bind, increasing unemployment. Higher government debt...

Countercyclical bank capital requirements have emerged as a popular regulatory tool to help smooth financial cycles. The idea is to reduce capital requirements when exogenous shocks cause aggregate bank capital to decrease so that regulation does not needlessly constrain banks' supply of credit....

We study the cyclical properties of sales, regular price changes and average prices paid by consumers ("effective" prices) using data on prices and quantities sold for numerous retailers across many U.S. metropolitan areas. Inflation in the effective prices paid by consumers declines...

The market for central bank reserves is mainly over-the-counter and exhibits a core-periphery network structure. This paper develops a model of relationship lending in the unsecured interbank market. In equilibrium, a tiered lending network arises endogenously as banks choose to build...

This paper imagines a world in which countries are on the Bitcoin standard, a monetary system in which all media of exchange are Bitcoin or are backed by it. The paper explores the similarities and differences between the Bitcoin standard and the gold standard and describes the media of exchange...

Central banks may face challenges in achieving their price stability goals when financial stability risks are present. There is, however, considerable heterogeneity among central banks with respect to how they manage these potential trade-offs. In this paper, we review the institutional and...

Digital platforms, such as Alibaba and Amazon, operate an online marketplace to facilitate transactions. This paper studies a platform's business model choice between accepting cash and issuing tokens, as well as the implications for welfare, resiliency, and interoperability. A cash platform...

We propose a new strength measure of the global financial cycle by estimating a regimeswitching factor model on cross-border equity flows for 61 countries. We then assess how the strength of the global financial cycle affects monetary policy independence, which is defined as the response of...

How well can a cryptocurrency serve as a means of payment? Cryptocurrencies need to overcome double spending by using costly mining and by delaying settlement. We formalize this insight through an incentive constraint that rules out double spending and pins down the welfare costs of a...

Monetary exchange is deemed essential when better incentive-compatible outcomes can be achieved with money than without it. We study essentiality both theoretically and experimentally, using finite-horizon monetary models that are naturally suited to the lab. We also follow the mechanism design...