This paper studies the optimal clearing arrangement for bilateral financial contracts in which an assessment of counterparty credit risk is crucial for efficiency. The economy is populated by borrowers and lenders. Borrowers are subject to limited commitment and hold private information about...

Bilateral financial contracts typically require an assessment of counterparty risk. Central clearing of these financial contracts allows market participants to mutualize their counterparty risk, but this insurance may weaken incentives to acquire and to reveal information about such risk. When...

This paper adopts a mechanism design approach to study optimal clearing arrangements for bilateral financial contracts in which an assessment of counterparty risk is crucial for efficiency. The economy is populated by two types of agents: a borrower and lender. The borrower is subject to 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 formulate the central bank's problem of selecting an optimal long-run inflation rate as the choice of a distorting tax by a planner who wishes to maximize discounted utility for a heterogeneous population of infinitely-lived households in an economy with constant aggregate income. Households...

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...