A central proposition in research on the role of banks in the transmission mechanism is that monetary policy imparts a direct impact on deposits and that deposits act as the driving force of bank lending. This paper argues that the emphasis on policy-induced changes in deposits is misplaced. A...

The paper presents a classroom experiment designed to improve undergraduate students' understanding of how banks create money. This concept is important to Macroeconomics and Money and Banking courses, yet students frequently struggle with it, largely due to the non-physical nature of deposits...

Privately issued money can benefit consumers in many ways, particularly in the areas of value stability and product variety. Decentralized currency production can benefit consumers by reducing inflation and increasing economic stability. Unlike a central bank, competing private banks must...

The efficiency of business transactions has become increasingly important in the digital age, and an issue that has arguably evolved as a result of free-markets. Already, advances in technology has revolutionized the medium of exchange from tangible hard-cold cash, to an intangible medium,...

The introduction and widespread use of credit cards increases trading efficiency but, by also increasing the velocity of money, it causes inflation, in the absence of monetary intervention. If the monetary authority attempts to restore pre-credit card price levels by reducing the money supply,...

In this article we argue that asymmetric information can explain why seignorage is an inferior choice to debt for governments. We also argue that the Ricardian equivalence for governments is very similar to what the Modigliani-Miller proposition is for corporations. Our model is based on Bolton...

The optimal choice of a monetary policy instrument depends on how tight and transparent the available instruments are and on whether policymakers can commit to future policies. Tightness is always desirable; transparency is only if policymakers cannot commit. Interest rates, which can be made...

Central banks fine-tune a currency price frequently based on a set of criteria, most of which revolves around currency stability. However, some of the criteria may be to boost exports by engineering an artificial low price for a currency, that is below market expectations. Such criteria may be...

Safe assets are demanded to smooth consumption across states (both intertemporallyand in cross-section). Some of these assets are supplied publicly (governmentbonds) and some are created and supplied privately (such as mortgage-backedsecurities and asset-backed securities). Private assets are...