The authors study the design of efficient intertemporal payment arrangements when the ability of agents to perform certain welfare-improving transactions is subject to random and unobservable shocks. Efficiency is achieved via a payment system that assigns balances to participants, adjusts them...

The authors introduce an element of centralization in a random matching model of money that allows for private liabilities to circulate as media of exchange. Some agents, which the authors identify as banks, are endowed with the technology to issue notes and to record-keep reserves with a...

The authors study credible information transmission by a benevolent central bank. They consider two possibilities: direct revelation through an announcement, versus indirect information transmission through monetary policy. These two ways of transmitting information have very different...