The analysis of open macroeconomies typically assumes (implicitly or explicitly) that resource allocation decisions are taken by domestic agents. The Portfolio Theory of Inflation (PTI) developed in this study assumes that some critical allocation decisions are taken by global investors and...

I build a general equilibrium model of the transmission of monetary policy on bank lending. Bank lending is done by individual banks that face random investment opportunities by creating inside money. Banks are subject to a reserve requirement and have access to the interbank money market. The...

The emergence of digital currencies such as Bitcoin and the underlying blockchain and distribution ledger technology have attracted significant attention. These developments have raised the possibility of considerable impacts on the financial system and perhaps the wider economy. This paper...

During and after the Great Recession of 2008-09, conventional monetary policy in the United States and many other advanced economies was constrained by the effective lower bound (ELB) on nominal interest rates. Several central banks implemented large-scale asset purchase (LSAP) programs, more...

The use of bank notes in Canada for payments has declined consistently for some time, and similar trends are evident in other countries. This has led some observers to predict a cashless society in the future. This paper considers the implications of the abandonment of the use of cash in the...

The paper explores the precarious balance between modernizing monetary systems by means of digital currencies (either issued by the central bank itself or independently) and safeguarding financial stability as also ensured by tangible payment (and saving) instruments like paper money. Which...

The author develops a dynamic model with two types of electronic money: reserves for transactions between bankers and zero-maturity deposits for transactions in the non-bank private sector. Using this model, he assesses the efficacy of unconventional monetary policy since the Great Recession....

Policy makers would like to prevent self-fulfilling fluctuations. Given the prevalence of occasionally binding constraints (OBCs) such as the zero lower bound (ZLB), this requires understanding the determinacy of models with OBCs. To this end, we derive existence and uniqueness conditions for...

The federal funds rate became uninformative about the stance of monetary policy from December 2008 to November 2015. During the same period, unconventional monetary policy actions, like large-scale asset purchases, show the Federal Reserve’s intention to depress longer-term interest rates....

The current debate whether zero interest rates are caused by a saving glut or a liquidity glut is resolved by the distinction between the market and the natural rate, where saving affects only the latter variable, and monetary policy mainly the first. This topic is linked to a second one: the...