Gold and tobacco have both been used as commodity money. One difference between the two is that gold yields utility, on account of its beauty, without diminishing its quantity. Tobacco yields utility when it is consumed. If this were the only difference, Copyright Springer-Verlag Berlin...

We show that Treasury security prices in the secondary market decrease significantly before auctions and recover shortly after. Hence, Treasury security prices tend to be lower on auction days, implying a large issuance cost for the Treasury Department, which is estimated to be 9-18 basis points...

There has been a widespread perception in the past few years that long-term asset prices are generally high because monetary authorities have effectively kept long-term interest rates, which the market uses to discount cash flows, low. This perception is not accurate. Long-term interest rates...

Traders with short horizons and privately known trading limits interact in a market for a risky asset. Risk-averse, long horizon traders supply a downward sloping residual demand curve that face the short-horizon traders. When the price falls close to the trading limits of the short horizon...

We propose a dynamic equilibrium model of asset prices and trading volume with heterogeneous agents fixed transactions costs. We show that even small fixed costs can give rise to large "no-trade" regions for each agent's optimal trading policy and a significant illiquidity discount in asset...