Recently, a lot of attention has been paid to the role “safe and liquid assets” play in the macroeconomy. Many economists take as given that safer assets will also be more liquid, and some go a step further by practically using the two terms as synonyms. However, they are not synonyms:...

Assets have "indirect liquidity" if they cannot be used as media of exchange, but can be traded to obtain a medium of exchange (money) and thereby inherit monetary properties. This essay describes a simple dynamic model of indirect asset liquidity, provides closed form solutions for real and...

We study how the strategic interaction of liquid-asset suppliers depends on the financial market conditions that determine asset liquidity. In our model, two asset suppliers try to profit from the liquidity services their assets confer. Asset liquidity is indirect in the sense that assets can be...

We revisit a traditional topic in monetary economics: the relationship between asset prices and monetary policy. We study a model in which money helps facilitate trade in decentralized markets, as in Lagos andWright (2005), and real assets are traded in an over-the-counter (OTC) market, as in...

A consistent empirical feature of bond yields is that term premia are, on average, positive. That is, investors in long term bonds receive higher returns than investors in similar (i.e.\ same default risk) shorter maturity bonds over the same holding period. The majority of theoretical...

Assets have "indirect liquidity" if they cannot be used as media of exchange, but can be traded to obtain a medium of exchange (money) and thereby inherit monetary properties. This essay describes a simple dynamic model of indirect asset liquidity, provides closed form solutions for real and...

A consistent empirical feature of bond yields is that term premia are, on average, positive. That is, investors in long term bonds receive higher returns than investors in similar (i.e.\ same default risk) shorter maturity bonds over the same holding period. The majority of theoretical...

We revisit a traditional topic in monetary economics: the relationship between asset prices and monetary policy. We study a model in which money helps facilitate trade in decentralized markets, as in Lagos andWright (2005), and real assets are traded in an over-the-counter (OTC) market, as in...