Fiat money in the Kiyotaki-Wright model

Summary We study versions of the Kiyotaki-Wright (1989) model with fiat money and show that: (1) The use of a low storage cost fiat money may be necessary for specialization and trade, (2) there can be valued fiat money steady states which are indeterminate, (3) there are no nontrivial steady-states in which all trades consist of fiat money for goods, (4) fiat money may be valued even if it is not the least costly-to-store object, and lastly, (5) two fiat monies with different storage costs may both be valued.We thank Randall Wright for comments and helpful discussions.The views expressed herein are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis or the Federal Reserve System.