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Working Paper
Phillips curves, monetary policy, and a labor market transmission mechanism
This paper develops a general equilibrium monetary model with performance incentives to study the inflation-unemployment relationship. A long-run downward-sloping Phillips curve can exist with perfectly anticipated inflation because workers? incentive to exert effort depend on financial market returns. Consequently, higher inflation rates can reduce wages and stimulate employment. An upward-sloping or vertical Phillips Curve can arise instead, depending on agents? risk aversion and the possibility of capital formation. Welfare might be higher away from the Friedman rule and with a central ...
Journal Article
Survey evidence of tighter credit conditions: what does it mean?
Recent survey results from the Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey indicate that, on net, many banks tightened their loan standards during 1990 and early 1991. This article investigates the implications of these results by comparing them to survey responses from previous periods.
Working Paper
Identifying credit crunches
This article emphasizes the role of nonprice rationing in credit crunches. It proposes a process for identifying credit crunches centered on the political economy of the period under study. The process is applied to the U.S. for the 1960-92 period, and a variable is constructed that indicates when credit crunches occurred. In addition, the article questions the conventional wisdom that Regulation Q was the primary cause of the 1960s credit crunches.
Working Paper
The effects of open market operations in a model of intermediation and growth
We examine an otherwise standard model of capital accumulation to which spatial separation and limited communication create a role for money and shocks to portfolio needs create a role for banks. In this context we examine the existence, multiplicity, and dynamical properties of monetary equilibria with positive nominal interest rates. Moderate levels of risk aversion can lead to the existence of multiple monetary steady states, all of which can be approached from a given set of initial conditions. In addition, even if there is a unique monetary steady state, monetary equilibria can be ...
Working Paper
Private money, settlement, and discount : a comment
Temzelides and Williamson present a model of private currency issuance to study the effect of clearing arrangements on the prices at which private currencies trade, on the volume of exchange, and on welfare. Their findings hinge on three factors: the location of the issuers relative to the area in which their currencies circulate, whether there is an arrangement for clearing nonlocally issued currencies, and whether agents are fully informed about the quality of the currencies. This paper finds that the Temzelides-Williamson model provides valuable insights about historical experiences with ...
Working Paper
Financial fragility with rational and irrational exuberance
This article formalizes investor rationality and irrationality, exuberance and apprehension, to consider the implications of belief formation for the fragility of an economy's financial structure. The model presented generates a financial structure with portfolio linkages that make it susceptible to contagious financial crises, despite the absence of coordination failures. Investors forecast the likelihood of loss from contagion and may shift preemptively to safer portfolios, breaking portfolio linkages in the process. The entire financial structure collapses when the last group of investors ...
Journal Article
Jobless recoveries and the wait-and-see hypothesis
In January 2005, after more than three years of sluggish employment growth, the U.S. economy finally recovered the jobs lost during the 2001 recession. Baffled by such a delayed rebound in payrolls, many speculated about the cause. Inevitably, observers compared the 2001 and 1991 recoveries, both widely considered to have been jobless. Schreft and Singh showed previously that one common feature of the first year of the jobless recoveries was the greater use of just-in-time employment practices. They also speculated that the greater availability of just-in-time employment practices contributed ...
Working Paper
Welfare-improving credit controls
Credit controls are generally believed to result in an inefficient allocation of resources. This paper presents a counterexample. It displays a general equilibrium, multi-good model with spatial separation for which steady state equilibria exist in which both cash (i.e. fiat currency) and trade credit are used in exchange. Transaction costs, restrictions on the timing of trade, and a positive nominal interest rate cause the laissez-faire equilibrium to be non-optimal. A quantitative restriction on the use of trade credit can yield a Pareto superior allocation.
Conference Paper
How and why do consumers choose their payment methods?
This overview will summarize the existing literature on consumer payment behavior: what we know and don?t know, what we need to know, and the implications for public policy.