We determine optimal token issuance and fee rates for issuers with varying degrees of commitment. For the polar cases of no commitment (Markov perfect) and full commitment (Ramsey) we study the conditions under which equilibriums exist. Assuming convex maintenance costs guarantees well-defined...

We examine the hold-up problem of price regulation and compare it with the monetary policy credibility problem. For both, reputational solutions are possible provided that the policymaker is sufficiently far-sighted, but the hold-up problem in regulation turns out to be more serious than the...

This paper explores the similarity of the underlying economic problems that lead to the establishment of (a) independent central banks to operate national monetary policies and (b) independent regulatory agencies for telecommunications and other utility service industries. We show that, in both...

Federal Reserve Banks are private corporations with boards of directors and one-third of the seats on each board are held by bankers. We investigate whether these directorships create value for banks elected between 1986 and 2013 and through what channels. The announcement of a banker's...

We document that inflation risk in the U.S. varies significantly over time and is often asymmetric. To analyze the macroeconomic effects of these asymmetric risks within a tractable framework, we construct the beliefs representation of a general equilibrium model with skewed distribution of...

In The Rise of Central Banks, Leon Wansleben provides a perceptive account of the evolution of central banking practices in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Switzerland from the 1970s through the subprime mortgage crisis and the global pandemic. Focusing on the concrete...

Leon Wansleben's new book, The Rise of Central Banks: State Power in Financial Capitalism, tells an intricately complex story of the world's most influential central banks successfully harnessing the forces of financial globalization to build their institutional power as the principal managers...

Are restrictions on fiscal policy necessary for monetary policy to be able to deliver price stability? When households are Ricardian, the net present value of future fiscal surpluses needs to equate the real value of government debt absent inflation. We show that when households are not...

We study how heterogeneous attention to inflation across households affects the transmission of monetary policy. Using household-level surveys for the US and Australia, we first show that households' attention to inflation varies across income levels. Specifically, we find that high-income...