Determinacy and expectational stability of equilibrium in a monetary sticky-price model with Taylor rule

Recent studies show that the Taylor rule possesses desirable properties in terms of generating determinacy and E-stability of rational expectations equilibria under sticky prices. This paper examines whether this policy rule retains these properties within a discrete-time money-in-utility-function model, employing three timings of money balances of the utility function that the existing literature contains: end-of-period timing and two types of cash-in-advance timing. This paper shows: (i) even a small degree of non-separability of the utility function between consumption and real balances causes the Taylor rule to be much more likely to induce indeterminacy or E-instability if this rule responds not only to inflation but also to output or the output gap; (ii) differences among the three timings strongly alter conditions for the Taylor rule to ensure both determinacy and E-stability.     

Currency competition: A partial vindication of Hayek

This paper establishes the existence of equilibria for environments in which outside money is issued competitively. Such equilibria are typically believed not to exist because of a classic overissue problem: if money is valued in equilibrium, an issuer produces money until its value is driven to zero. By backward induction, money cannot have value in the first place. This paper shows that overissuance is not a problem if agents believe that if an issuer produces more than some threshold number of notes, then only those notes issued up to the threshold will be valued; additional notes will be worthless. This result is very general, applying to any monetary economy in which equilibria with and without valued money exist if the money supply is finite. The paper also compares the allocation achieved by a monopolist to that achieved with competitive issuance in both a search and an overlapping-generations environment. The results depend on the environment considered, but two general conclusions arise. First, it is ambiguous whether competitive issuers can achieve a more desirable allocation than a monopolist. Second, with competitive issuance, a licensing agency can always improve on pure laissez-faire and achieve the efficient allocation in the long run.     

Wealth Distribution, Inflation Tax, and Societal Benefits of Illiquid Bonds

Illiquid nominal government bonds are shown to have two opposing effects on welfare. First, the relatively poor choose to top-up money balances for future consumption by purchasing nominal bonds at a discount. The wealth distribution becomes more centered with a smaller consumption deviation from the first best. Second, the higher inflation tax on monetary wealth to finance interest payments makes money less valuable, so that the quantity of output produced in exchange for money decreases. The trade-off between the welfare-enhancing effect on wealth distribution and the distortionary effect on output implies the socially optimal discount rate and liquidity.     

Banks, private money, and government regulation

We study competition between inside and outside money in economies with trading frictions and financial intermediation. Claims on banks circulate if the redemption rate is low. When the quantity of fiat money is scarce, coexistence of inside and outside money dominates equilibria with a unique medium of exchange. If outside money is ample, banks choose to redeem claims in outside money, which increases welfare. Under binding reserve requirements, tightening monetary policy leads to credit rationing. Our results support recent trends toward lower reserve requirements. However, we also identify situations where restrictions on note issue are beneficial.     

Optimal monetary policy in an economy with incomplete markets and idiosyncratic risk

This study investigates an incomplete markets economy in which the saving behavior of a continuum of infinitely lived agents is influenced by precautionary saving motives and borrowing constraints. Agents can use two types of assets (interest bearing IOUS and money) to smooth consumption. Money is valued because of a timing friction in the bond market. In particular, the bond market closes before agents observe their idiosyncratic productivity shock. I find that the Friedman rule is not optimal for this economy. The results indicate that the optimal allocation has a rate of inflation of 10%, and a positive amount of private credit held by the government. A positive inflation rate transfers resources from agents with big endowments to those holding bonds which improves risk sharing, and therefore, welfare. However, for higher rates of inflation, agents economize on money holdings, offsetting the insurance effects, and causing a reduction in welfare. Furthermore, higher rates of inflation discourage agents from borrowing, and the endogenous lower bound on bond holdings is higher than the exogenous borrowing limit. High rates of inflation, therefore, exacerbate frictions in the bond market.     

Revenue maximizing inflation

A classic monetary policy result is that revenue maximization entails setting the inflation tax rate equal to the inverse of the interest semi-elasticity of the demand for money. The standard approach underlying “Cagan's rule” is partial equilibrium in nature, treating money demand as being given from outside the model and abstracting from the real effects of inflation. This paper reconsiders the question of the revenue maximizing inflation rate in a general equilibrium framework with a labor-leisure choice, where money is held because it reduces transactions costs. In this framework, the revenue maximizing inflation tax rate is lower than that implied by Cagan's rule.     

A new perspective on the Gold Standard: Inflation as a population phenomenon

The purpose of this paper is to contribute a new model of the Gold Standard, focusing on the interaction between resource scarcity and demographics. In a dynamic micro-founded model we find that: i) prices and equilibrium gold holdings increase with population (a scale effect), but decrease with the population growth rate; ii) that the Gold Standard implies deflation unless extraction resources outstrip population growth; and iii) there is no optimal quantity of money. The predictions of the model are examined using a structural VAR. Our results also shed light on debates about the viability of a return to the Gold Standard, and, more generally, on the interaction between policy variables and scarce resources.     

Reconciling Bagehot and the Fed's Response to September 11

Bagehot (1873) states that to prevent bank panics a central bank should provide liquidity at a "very high rate of interest." In contrast, most of the theoretical literature on liquidity provision suggests that central banks should lend at an interest rate of zero. This is broadly consistent with the Federal Reserve's behavior in the days following September 11, 2001. This paper shows that both policies can be reconciled. With commodity money, as in Bagehot's time, liquidity is scarce and a high price allows banks to self-select. In contrast, the Fed has a virtually unlimited ability to temporarily expand the money supply so self-selection is unnecessary.     

Money Velocity in an Endogenous Growth Business Cycle with Credit Shocks

The paper sets the neoclassical monetary business cycle model within endogenous growth, adds exchange credit shocks, and finds that money and credit shocks explain much of the velocity variations. The role of the shocks varies across subperiods in an intuitive fashion. Endogenous growth is key to the construction of the money and credit shocks because these have similar effects on velocity, but opposite effects upon growth. The model matches the data's average velocity and simulates well velocity volatility. Its Cagan-like money demand means that money and credit shocks cause greater velocity variation, the higher is the nominal interest rate.     

The Liquidity Effect in the Federal Funds Market: Evidence at the Monthly Frequency

In this paper, we argue that much of the research into the link between money and interest rates suffers from misspecification. The measure of money and the measure of interest rates are not always well matched. In examining the transmission of monetary policy, we show that using an appropriate measure of money, Federal Reserve balances, and the appropriate interest rate, the federal funds rate, a clear liquidity effect exists. Furthermore, we explain how a lack of a clear institutional understanding may have contributed to the finding of a "liquidity puzzle" in the past.     

Is backdating executive stock options always costly to shareholders?

We use a binomial model to investigate the cost to shareholders of backdating employee stock option (ESO) grants to award in‐the‐money rather than at‐the‐money options to a manager. When the expected return of the stock underlying an ESO is sufficiently close to the risk‐free rate, a backdating arrangement can always be structured to simultaneously improve shareholders’ wealth and the manager's utility. The smaller the manager's non‐option wealth, personal income tax rate or risk tolerance, the more likely a backdating arrangement can be welfare improving.     

Inflation Taxation and Welfare with Externalities and Leisure

This paper examines how inflation taxation affects resource allocation and welfare in a neoclassical growth model with leisure, a production externality and money in the utility function. Switching from consumption taxation to inflation taxation to finance government spending reduces real money balances relative to income, but increases consumption, labor, capital, and output. The net welfare effect of this switch depends crucially on the strength of the externality and on the elasticity of intertemporal substitution. While it is always negative without the externality, it is likely to be positive with a strong externality and elastic intertemporal substitution.     

On measuring the nearness of near moneys revisited

In this paper we re-examine the theoretical foundations and empirical estimation of models which incorporate a CES utility function to study the nearness of money substitutes. We show that previous studies using these models have been subject to a number of theoretical and empirical flaws. The result of these flaws has been to overestimate the degree of substitutability between money and near money assets. We show that when these errors are corrected, estimates of substitution elasticities are several times smaller than even those of the most recent studies and therefore are more in line with estimates from more traditional demand for money studies.     

Maintaining low inflation: Money, interest rates, and policy stance

This paper presents a systematic empirical relationship between money and subsequent prices and output, using US, euro area and Swiss data since the 1960-1970s. Monetary developments, unlike interest rate stance measures, are shown to provide qualitative and quantitative information on subsequent inflation. The usefulness of monetary analysis is contrasted to weaknesses in modeling monetary policy and inflation with respectively short-term interest rates and real activity measures. The analysis sheds light on the recent change in inflation volatility and persistence as well as on the Phillips curve flattening, and reveals drawbacks in pursuing a low inflation target without considering monetary aggregates.     

Fiscal Consequences of Paying Interest on Reserves

We review the role of the central bank's balance sheet in a textbook monetary model and explore what changes if the central bank is allowed to pay interest on its liabilities. When the central bank (CB) cannot pay interest, away from the zero lower bound its (real) balance sheet is limited by the demand for money. Furthermore, if securities are not marked to market and the central bank holds its bonds to maturity, it is impossible for the CB to make losses, and it always obtains profits from being a monopoly provider of money. When the option of paying interest on liabilities is allowed, the limit on the CB's balance sheet is lifted. In this case, the CB is free to take on interest‐rate risk – for example, by buying long‐term securities and financing those purchases with short‐term debt that pays the market interest rate. This is a risky enterprise that can lead to additional profits but also to losses. To the extent that losses exceed the profits of the monopoly operations, the CB faces two options: either it is recapitalised by Treasury or it increases its monopoly profits by raising the inflation tax.     

Financial market participation and the apparent instability of money demand

This paper uses multi-period cross-sectional data on financial assets holdings to shed light on the postwar stability of money demand in the United States. I first present a new measure of the evolution of financial market participation, by relating participation to the extensive margins of money demand, and quantify the influence of wealth on participation decisions. I then relate the increase in participation to the period of “missing money” and to the subsequent higher interest rate elasticity of monetary aggregates. The paper indicates that time-series estimations of money demand relationships are inherently flawed and tend to inappropriately suggest instability.     

居民风险偏好与中国货币政策的宏观经济效应——基于DSGE模型的数量分析

当前,我国宏观经济形势复杂多变,货币政策实施效果的影响因素随之呈现多样化特征。在此背景下,本文试图以风险偏好为研究视角,对我国居民风险偏好水平变动与货币政策宏观经济效应之间的关系进行分析。本文以标准新凯恩斯模型为基础,构造符合我国宏观经济现实特征的DSGE(动态随机一般均衡)模型,并对转型时期的最优混合型货币政策规则进行研究;为进一步强调货币在中国宏观经济波动中所扮演的重要角色,模型中引入消费和实际货币余额不可分的跨期效用函数形式。研究结果表明:(1)包含名义货币增长的混合型泰勒规则拟合我国转型时期的货币政策规则效果最佳,因此货币供应量仍是重要的政策工具;(2)与可分性模型相比,不可分模型拟合我国宏观经济现实特征的效果更优。在不可分效用函数下,与货币供应量相关的实际货币余额将影响经济的产出缺口和通货膨胀,使得居民风险偏好成为决定货币政策效果的重要因素。具体而言,当居民风险偏好水平上升时,货币政策对我国宏观经济波动的影响随之增强。因此,在选择货币政策实施时点上,应充分考虑市场中的风险偏好情况,从而更好地发挥货币政策调控宏观经济的职能。     

居民风险偏好与中国货币政策的宏观经济效应——基于DSGE模型的数量分析

当前,我国宏观经济形势复杂多变,货币政策实施效果的影响因素随之呈现多样化特征。在此背景下,本文试图以风险偏好为研究视角,对我国居民风险偏好水平变动与货币政策宏观经济效应之间的关系进行分析。本文以标准新凯恩斯模型为基础,构造符合我国宏观经济现实特征的DSGE(动态随机一般均衡)模型,并对转型时期的最优混合型货币政策规则进行研究;为进一步强调货币在中国宏观经济波动中所扮演的重要角色,模型中引入消费和实际货币余额不可分的跨期效用函数形式。研究结果表明:(1)包含名义货币增长的混合型泰勒规则拟合我国转型时期的货币政策规则效果最佳,因此货币供应量仍是重要的政策工具;(2)与可分性模型相比,不可分模型拟合我国宏观经济现实特征的效果更优。在不可分效用函数下,与货币供应量相关的实际货币余额将影响经济的产出缺口和通货膨胀,使得居民风险偏好成为决定货币政策效果的重要因素。具体而言,当居民风险偏好水平上升时,货币政策对我国宏观经济波动的影响随之增强。因此,在选择货币政策实施时点上,应充分考虑市场中的风险偏好情况,从而更好地发挥货币政策调控宏观经济的职能。     

Inflation and output dynamics with state-dependent pricing decisions

This paper studies a state-dependent pricing model in which firms face a fixed cost of changing their pricing plans. A pricing plan specifies an entire sequence of time-varying future prices. Allowing firms to choose a pricing plan rather than a single price generates inflation inertia in the response of the economy to small changes in the growth rate of money. Allowing firms to choose when to change their pricing plan generates a non-linear response of inflation and output to small and large changes in the money growth rate. The non-linear solution method also reveals that the model generates an asymmetric response of output and inflation to monetary expansions and contractions.