We study an economy where agents are subject to liquidity demand shocks, and banks arise endogenously to insure consumers against these shocks. In this environment we evaluate the desirability of a lender of last resort who can provide liquidity loans to banks in distress. In the absence of a...

Modern financial sectors consist of banks, asset markets and a central bank. This paper builds a model where these institutions provide different financial services, and their interaction supports efficient allocations. When one institution is missing equilibria are, by construction,...

We examine how banks and financial markets interact with one another to provide liquidity to investors. The critical assumption is that financial markets are characterized by limited enforcement of contracts, and in the event of default only a fraction of borrowers' assets can be seized. Limited...

We evaluate the desirability of having an elastic currency generated by a lender of last resort that prints money and lends it to banks in distress. When banks cannot borrow, the economy has a unique equilibrium that is not Pareto optimal. The introduction of unlimited borrowing at a zero...

We examine optimal discount window policy in an economy with a linear investment technology and aggregate liquidity shocks. Unrestricted lending at the discount window prevents large shocks from causing banking crises, but leads to indeterminacy of stationary equilibrium. We show how a policy of...

We consider a small open economy that produces and consumes two goods, one tradable and one not. Domestic residents combine their own income with credit obtained either abroad or at home to invest in capital production, which requires the tradable good. Capital investments in the tradable sector...

We study sunspot immunity in a dynamic monetary economy in which consumers are allowed to trade put and call option contracts on the general price level. We define the concept of strong sunspot immunity to characterize economies that have no sunspot equilibria regardless of the number of...

We present an example of a small open economy where small increases in the world interest rate may induce a sharp decline in output and a precipitous depreciation of the exchange rate. Due to a costly state verification problem in domestic credit markets, combined with unrestricted international...

Empirical evidence suggests non-linearity in the impact of inflation on financial intermediation and real activity. Evidence also suggests that high inflation affects financial intermediation through the substitution of dollars `under the mattress' for savings in domestic banks. We model an...