The tug-o-war for supremacy between inflation targeting and monetary targeting is a classic, yet timely topic, in monetary economics. In this paper, we revisit this issue within the context of a pure-exchange, overlapping generations model in which spatial separation and random relocation create...

Does a rise in income inequality induce people to work harder to stay in the rat race (“keep up with the Joneses”) or to simply drop out? We investigate this issue in a simple new framework in which heterogeneous ability agents get extra utility if their consumption keeps up with the...

In this paper, we argue that the observed difference in the cost of intraday and overnight liquidity is part of an optimal payments system design. In our environment, overnight liquidity affects output while intraday liquidity affects only the distribution of resources between money holders and...

We study a variant of the conventional keeping-up-with-the-Joneses setup in which heterogeneous-ability agents care both about consumption and leisure and receive an utility premium if their consumption exceeds that of the Joneses'. Unlike the conventional setup in which all agents are assumed...

Sargent and Wallace (1981) study the feasibility of a bond-financed increase in government spending. In their "unpleasant monetarist arithmetic," Sargent and Wallace show how using bonds to finance a permanent deficit today may necessitate faster money growth in the future, yielding higher...

In an overlapping generations model, momentary equilibria are defined as points that lie on the intergenerational offer curve, i.e., they satisfy agents’ optimality conditions and market clearing at any date. However, some dynamic sequences commencing from such points may not be considered...

Rejuveniles are "people who cultivate tastes and mind-sets tradi- tionally associated with those younger than themselves." (Noxon, 2006) In this paper, we study a standard AK growth model of overlapping generations populated by rejuve- niles. For our purposes, rejuveniles are old agents who...