We study the incentives of participants in a real-time gross settlement system with and without the addition of a liquidity-saving mechanism (queue). Participants in our model face a liquidity shock and different costs for delaying payments. They trade off the cost of delaying a payment against...

This paper analyzes the welfare implications of international spillovers related to productivity gains, changes in market size, or government spending. We introduce trade costs and endogenous varieties in a two-country general-equilibrium model with monopolistic competition, drawing a...

This paper proposes a simple framework for analyzing a continuum of monetary policy rules characterized by differing degrees of credibility, in which commitment and discretion become special cases of what we call quasi commitment. The monetary policy authority is assumed to formulate optimal...

We present a dynamic contracting model in which the principal and the agent disagree about the resolution of uncertainty, and we illustrate the contract design in an application with Bayesian learning. The disagreement creates gains from trade that the principal realizes by transferring payment...

Empirical research over the last decade has uncovered predictive relationships between the slope of the yield curve and subsequent real activity and inflation. Some of these relationships are highly significant, but their theoretical motivations suggest that they may not be stable over time. We...

In the literature, bank runs take the form of withdrawals of real demand deposits that deplete a fixed reserve of goods in the banking system. This framework describes the type of bank run that has occurred historically in the United States and more recently in developing countries. However, in...

In a recent paper (“A Primer on the Economics and Time Series Econometrics of Wealth Effects,” 2001), Davis and Palumbo investigate the empirical relation between three cointegrated variables: aggregate consumption, asset wealth, and labor income. Although cointegration implies that an...

In a 1999 paper, Freeman proposes a model in which discount window lending and open market operations have different outcomes—an important development because in most of the literature the results of these policy tools are indistinguishable. Freeman’s conclusion that the central bank should...

This paper explores the effects of central bank transparency on the performance of optimal inflation targeting rules. I assume that both the central bank and the private sector face uncertainty about the correct model of the economy and have to learn. A transparent central bank can reduce one...