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...

This paper studies a overlapping generations economy with capital where limitedcommunication and stochastic relocation create an endogenous transactions role for…at money. We assume a production function with a knowledge-externality (Romer-style) that nests economies with endogenous growth (AK...

Faced with real and nominal shocks, what should a benevolent central bankdo, …x the money growth rate or target the inflation rate? In this paper, wemake a …rst attempt at studying the optimal choice of monetary policy in-struments in a micro-founded model of money. Speci…cally, we produce...

The Friedman rule, a widely studied prescription for monetary policy, is optimal inTownsend’s turnpike model of money; it is not so in the overlapping generations versionof his stochastic relocation model of money. We investigate these monetary models inthe light of this disparity. To that...

In this paper, we explore the connection between optimal monetary policy and heterogeneityamong agents. We study a standard monetary economy with two types of agents inwhich the stationary distribution of money holdings is non-degenerate. Sans type-specific fiscalpolicy, we show that the...

In models of money with an infinitely-lived representative agent (ILRA models), the optimal monetary policyis almost always the Friedman rule. Overlapping generations (OG) models are different: in this paper, westudy how they are different, and why. We investigate the welfare properties of...

We study several popular monetary models which generate a non-degenerate stationary distribution of money holdings. Across these environments, our principal finding is as follows: a monetary policy that sets long run nominal interest rates to zero (the Friedman rule) does not typically maximize...

Central banks typically find it difficult to turn off the "political pressure valve". This has important consequences for the types of monetary policies they implement. This paper presents an analysis of how political factors may come into play in the equilibrium determination of inflation. We...

The tug-o-war for supremacy between inflation targeting and monetary tar-geting is a classic yet timely topic in monetary economics. In this paper, werevisit this question within the context of a pure-exchange overlapping genera-tions model of money where spatial separation and random relocation...