When limited commitment hinders unsecured credit, assets help by serving as collateral. We study models where assets differ in pledgability - the extent to which they can be used to secure loans - and hence liquidity. Although many previous analyses of imperfect credit focus on producers, we...

The purpose of this paper is to discuss some of the models used in New Monetarist Economics, which is our label for a body of recent work on money, banking, payments systems, asset markets, and related topics. A key principle in New Monetarism is that solid microfoundations are critical for...

We develop a theory of money and credit as competing payment instruments, then put it to work in applications. Buyers can use cash or credit, with the former (latter) subject to the inflation tax (transaction costs). Frictions that make the choice of payment method interesting also imply...

We study the effects of inflation in models with various trading frictions. The framework is related to recent search-based monetary theory, in that trade takes place periodically in centralized and decentralized markets, but we consider three alternative mechanisms for price formation:...

When limited commitment hinders unsecured credit, assets help by serving as collateral. We study models where assets differ in pledgability - the extent to which they can be used to secure loans - and hence liquidity. Although many previous analyses of imperfect credit focus on producers, we...