In this paper we explore the link between monetary policy and market power. We start by establishing several facts on market power in UK markets using micro data. First, while no clear trend emerges for market concentration, market power measured by markups estimated at the firm level have...

Low key rates hurt the profits of deposit-taking institutions in a differentiated Bertrand game if there is neither a tax on banknotes, nor a limit on its quantity, nor a reduction of its quality. By making the electronic dollar the unit of account and taxing paper currency, the central bank can...

We examine the effects of various borrower-based macroprudential tools in a New Keynesian environment where both real and nominal interest rates are low. Our model features long-term debt, housing transaction costs and a zero-lower bound constraint on policy rates. We find that the long-term...

We explore the economics and optimal design of "permissioned" distributed ledger technology (DLT) in a credit economy. Designated validators verify transactions and update the ledger at a cost that is derived from a supermajority voting rule, thus giving rise to a public good provision game....

The form of bounded rationality characterizing the representative agent is key in the choice of the optimal monetary policy regime. While inflation targeting prevails for myopia that distorts agents' inflation expectations, price level targeting emerges as the optimal policy under myopia...

This paper shows theoretically the linkages among monetary policy rate, the real sector demand for loans with supply shocks, aggregate risks, and social welfare. We prove that a) when the loans’ demand is elastic bank competition and the policy rate decrease risks and increase the amount of...

We propose a new approach to analyze economic shocks. Our new procedure identifies economic shocks as exogenous shifts in a function; hence, we call them "functional shocks." We show how to identify such shocks and how to trace their effects in the economy via VARs using "VARs with functional...

We present a model embodying moderate amounts of nominal rigidities which accounts for the observed inertia in inflation and persistence in output. The key features of our model are those that prevent a sharp rise in marginal costs after an expansionary shock to monetary policy. Of these...