This paper advances three fundamental propositions regarding money: (1) As R. W. Clower (1965) famously put it, money buys goods and goods buy money, but goods do not buy goods. (2) Money is always debt; it cannot be a commodity from the first proposition because, if it were, that would mean...

I use the valuation equation of government debt to understand fiscal and monetary policy in and following the great recession of 2008-2009, to think about whether the US is headed for a fiscal inflation, and what that inflation will look like. I emphasize that a fiscal inflation can come well...

This paper examines demand spillovers in a two country open economy model to a demand shock newline (emanating from a single, source country) sufficiently large to push one or both countries into a liquidity trap. The zero lower bound on nominal interest rates keeps the central bank in the...

This paper develops a micro-founded general equilibrium model of the financial system composed of ultimate borrowers, ultimate lenders and financial intermediaries. The model is used to investigate the impact of uncertainty about the likelihood of governmental bailouts on leverage, interest...

The literature on optimal monetary policy in New Keynesian models under both commitment and discretion usually solves for the optimal allocations that are consistent with a rational expectations market equilibrium, but it does not study whether the policy can be implemented given the available...

The paper explores the relationship between financial stability, deflation, and monetary policy. A discussion of narrow liquidity, broad liquidity, market liquidity, and financial distress provides the foundation for the analysis. There are two preliminary conclusions. Equity prices are a...

Reasoning within the New Neoclassical Synthesis (NNS) we previously recommended that price stability should be the primary objective of monetary policy. We called this a neutral policy because it keeps output at its potential, defined as the outcome of an imperfectly competitive real business...

The paper proposes three options for overcoming the zero bound on interest rate policy: a carry tax on money, open market operations in long bonds, and monetary transfers. A variable carry tax on electronic bank reserves could enable a central bank to target negative nominal interest rates. A...

Our results demonstrate that over the period in question the CBR employed a variety of intermediary monetary policy targets: interest rates, money supply and balances of the accounts of commercial banks with the Bank of Russia. The diversity of the intermediary targets can be attributed...

The recent European economic crisis has dramatically exposed the failures of the various institutional mechanisms in place to maintain economic stability in Europe, and has unveiled the difficulty in achieving international coordination on fiscal and financial stability policies. Drawing on the...