Our suggestion consists of three postulates: assets are valued only in terms of their payoffs, perfect foresight, and complete and costless markets under laissez-faire. Together these postulates imply that the crucial anomaly, rate-of-return dominance of “money,” is to be explained by legal...

In this paper I describe a “monetary” system in which backing is provided for the government’s liabilities by way of contingent resort to taxes. The system has some of the features of a commodity money system with a large seignorage spread between bid and ask prices. It is studied within...

In this paper, we examine various exchange rate regimes, paying particular attention to what difference the monetary-fiscal policy choices of governments make. The exchange rate may be market-determined or fixed, and if fixed, either cooperatively or by one government alone. Further, capital...

We study the possible specialness of circulating as opposed to noncirculating private securities using models whose equilibria imply the existence of both. The models are pure exchange setups with spatial separation and with the potential for a variety of intertemporal trades. We find a sense in...

Commodity money is modeled as one or two of the capital goods in a one-consumption good and one or two capital-good, overlapping generations model. Among the topics addressed using versions of the model are (i) the nature of the inefficiency of commodity money; (ii) the validity of...