In this paper, we argue that the observed difference in the cost of intraday and overnight liquidity is part of an optimal payments system design. In our environment, the interest charged on overnight liquidity affects output, while the cost of intraday liquidity only affects the distribution of...

We explore the connection between optimal monetary policy and heterogeneity among agents. We utilize a standard monetary economy with two types of agents that differ in the marginal utility they derive from real money balances-a framework that produces a nondegenerate stationary distribution of...

We study the incentives of participants in a real-time gross settlement system with and without the addition of a liquidity-saving mechanism (queue). Participants in our model face a liquidity shock and different costs for delaying payments. They trade off the cost of delaying a payment against...

The nineteenth-century economist Walter Bagehot maintained that in order to prevent bank panics, a central bank should provide liquidity at a very high rate of interest. However, most of the theoretical literature on liquidity provision suggests that central banks should lend at an interest rate...

In this paper, we consider the case for an intraday market for reserves. We discuss the separate roles of intraday and overnight reserves and argue that an intraday market could be organized in the same way as the overnight market. We present arguments for and against a market for intraday...

We examine models with spatial separation and limited communication that have shown some promise toward resolving the disparity between theory and practice concerning optimal monetary policy; these models suggest that the Friedman rule may not be optimal. We show that intergenerational transfers...

In this paper, we address the question whether increasing households' financial market access improves welfare in a financial system in which there is intense competition among banks for private households' funds. Following earlier work by Diamond and by Fecht, we use a model in which the degree...

We study two designs for a liquidity-saving mechanism (LSM), a queuing arrangement used with an interbank settlement system. We consider an environment where banks are subjected to liquidity shocks. Banks must make the decision to send, queue, or delay their payments after observing a noisy...

We compare two stylized frameworks for the implementation of monetary policy. The first framework relies only on standing facilities, and the second one relies only on open market operations. We show that the Friedman rule cannot be implemented in the first framework, but can be implemented...