money and capital abstract the effects of money anticipated inflation on capital formation is a classic issue in macroeconomics previous papers adopt reduced form approaches putting money in the utility function or imposing cash in advance but using otherwise frictionless models we follow instead a literature that tries to be explicit about the frictions making money essential this introduces new elements including a two sector structure with centralized and decentralized markets stochastic trading opportunities and bargaining these elements matter quantitatively and numerical results differ from findings in the reduced form literature the analysis also reduces a gap between microfounded monetary economics and mainstream macro

choosy search and the mismatch of talents this article proposes a multi sector matching model where workers have symmetric sector specific skills and the search market is segmented by sector workers choose the range of markets they are willing to participate in i identify a composition externality workers do not take into account the impact of their choice on sector specific mean productivity among the pools of job seekers consequently workers prospect too many market segments and there is room for public policy even when the so called hosios condition holds

the good the bad and the regulator an experimental test of two conditional audit schemes conditional audit rules are designed to achieve regulatory compliance with fewer inspections than required by random auditing a regulator places individuals into audit pools that differ in probability of audit or severity of fine and species transition rules between pools future pool assignment is conditional on current audit results we conduct an experiment to compare two specific schemes harrington s past compliance targeting and friesen s optimal targeting against random auditing we find a production possibility frontier between compliance and minimizing inspections optimal targeting generates the lowest inspection rates as predicted but random auditing the highest compliance past compliance targeting is intermediate

limits of exact equilibria for capacity constrained sellers with costly search abstract this paper studies finite versions of competitive matching models in which sellers announce prices and buyers understand the relationship between price and probability of trade two equilibrium concepts are studied for finite games subgame perfect equilibrium and rational expectations equilibrium it is shown that the distribution of prices offered by sellers under both equilibrium concepts converges weakly to the same competitive equilibrium distribution of prices furthermore the payoffs that sellers face in both kinds of equilibrium have the market utility property in the limit journal of economic literature classification numbers c78 d41 d45

money as the mechanism of exchange abstract the existence and use of money remained an embarrassing puzzle for monetary analysis we observe over man s history that social groups without generally accepted media of exchange exhibit poor survival characteristics most social groups do not use assets or commodities at random in the execution of exchanges one observes that a small subset of assets is dominantly used in transactions these transaction dominating assets are usually referred to as money the literature contains many suggestive attempts to explain the emergence and role of money the classic writers made passing references in somewhat pictorial language to the extension markets and increasing labor productivity induced by the use of a general medium of exchange this idea has never been systematically developed however karl brunner 1971

endogenous search price dispersion and welfare abstract this paper studies the welfare cost of inflation in a frictional monetary economy with endogenous consumer search equilibrium entails price dispersion where sellers compete for buyers by posting prices we identify three channels through which inflation affects welfare the real balance channel is the source of welfare loss its interaction with the price posting channel generates a welfare cost larger than lucas 2000 the search channel reduces the welfare cost by more than one half through general equilibrium effect the aggregate effect of these three channels on welfare is non monotonic additionally the welfare cost of inflation fluctuations is negligible

the distribution of money balances and the nonneutrality of money recent monetary models with explicit microfoundations are made tractable by assuming that agents have access to centralized markets after one round of decentralized trade given quasi linear preferences this makes the distribution of money degenerate which keeps the models simple but precludes the discussion of distributional effects of monetary policy we generalize these models by assuming two rounds of trade before agents can readjust their money holdings to study a range of new distributional effects analytically we show that unexpected symmetric lump sum money injections may increase short run output and welfare whereas asymmetric injections may increase long run output and welfare

a divisible search model of fiat money this paper extends the kiyotaki wright search model of fiat money to allow for divisible money and goods the extension allows me to examine the standard issues in monetary economics such as the neutrality and superneutrality of money by severing the artificial link in the kiyotaki wright model between the money supply and the number of money holders it is shown that money is neutral but not superneutral money growth generates a trading opportunity effect it changes the fraction of different agents in the economy and hence changes the probability with which agents have a successful match in addition money growth has a negative effect on the real money balance that is familiar in walrasian monetary models the balance of the two effects can imply a positive optimal money growth rate

search inflation and capital accumulation abstract this paper constructs a model to integrate the search monetary theory into a neoclassical growth model with divisible goods and money the model is used to examine the relationship between money growth and capital accumulation the framework uncovers a distinct extensive effect that an increase in the money growth rate increases the frequency of successful trades by increasing the number of agents in the market this positive extensive effect on the number of trades can dominate the conventional negative intensive effects of money growth on individuals labor input and real money balance in which case increasing the money growth rate increases aggregate capital and output

monetary policy and asset prices a mechanism design approach we investigate the eects of monetary policy on asset prices in economies where assets are traded periodically in over the counter otc markets with bilateral meetings between buyers and sellers the trading mechanism in pairwise meetings is designed to maximize social welfare taking as given the frictions in the environment e g lack of commitment and limited enforcement and monetary policy we show that asset price bubbles emerge in a constrained e cient monetary equilibrium only if liquidity is abundant and the rst best allocation is implementable in contrast if liquidity is scarce assets are priced at their fundamental value in any constrained e cient monetary equilibrium in which case an increase in in ation has no eect on asset prices but it reduces output and welfare finally for low in ation rates the bursting of an asset price bubble can be an optimal response to a shock that reduces assets resalability

regulatory performance of audit tournaments and compliance observability this paper examines the effectiveness of traditional regulatory schemes and newly emerging social information schemes for achieving compliance our experiment focuses on two stochastic audit schemes for enforcing regulatory compliance in the random audit mechanism firms are randomly chosen for inspection in the tournament audit mechanism the probability of inspection increases with the degree of estimated underreporting to study the effects of social information the experiment varies the observability of identity output and compliance decisions optimal output is theoretically independent of the auditing scheme but equilibrium reporting is higher under the tournament mechanism than random auditing experimental findings are broadly consistent with the theoretical predictions for reporting but deviate modestly for output in particular we find that average output is lower and reporting is higher in the tournament treatment compared to the random audit treatment at the individual level a majority of participants misreported in most periods social observability does not affect output or reporting significantly in either of the audit treatments

toward a theory of international currency we use the framework of random matching games and develop a two country model of the world economy in which two national currencies compete and may be circulated as media of exchange there are multiple equilibria which differ in the areas of circulation of the two currencies in one equilibrium the two national currencies are circulated only locally in another one currency is circulated as an international currency there is also an equilibrium in which both currencies are accepted internationally we also find an equilibrium in which the two currencies are directly exchanged we first characterize the existence conditions of these equilibria in terms of the relative country size and the degree of economic integration and then use an evolutionary approach to equilibrium selection to explain the evolution of the international currency as the two economies become more integrated some welfare implications are also discussed for example a country can improve its national welfare by letting its own currency circulate internationally provided the domestic circulation is controlled for when the total supply is fixed however a resulting currency shortage may reduce the national welfare

nonneutrality of money in dispersion hume revisited for a class of standard and widely used preferences a one shot money injection in a standard matching model can induce a significant and persistent output response by dispersing the distribution of wealth decentralized trade matters for both persistence and significance in the presence of government bonds the injection has a liquidity effect and the inflation rate right following the injection may be below the steady state rate level

efficient tax reporting the effects of taxpayer liability information services the complexity of the individual income tax system can give rise to both under and overreporting of liability thus creating a wedge between taxpayer perceptions of the price of public services and their actual cost and potentially leading to budget misallocations and associated efficiency losses this study uses theory and experiments to evaluate the effectiveness of taxpayer service programs that endeavor to resolve uncertainty over tax liability to do so we induce uncertainty over tax liability and investigate the effects of both service accuracy and reliability we find participants are less likely to file when tax liability is uncertain but the provision of information offsets this effect furthermore it appears that simply providing a service even one that imperfectly reveals liability increases the propensity to file and the accuracy of the filing when a service that promises to resolve uncertainty completely is requested but not delivered the result is underreporting even more severe than in a setting where no service is available jel h2 h26 c91

lack of recall and centralized monetary trade we introduce lack of recall of past transactions as an alternative assumption to anonymity in a model where trade is centralized in environments where there is an intertemporal lack of double coincidence of wants problem and lack ofcommitment lack of recall can give rise to monetary equilibria that dominate nonmonetary outcomes in terms of welfare

endogenous audits uncertainty and taxpayer assistance services theory and experiments abstract in recent years there has been a sharp rise in the information available to individual income taxpayers such as through tax preparation software provided by third parties and support available by tax agencies but the effects of this information on tax reporting are not well understood within a setting characterized by an endogenous audit process and taxpayer uncertainty this study uses theory and laboratory experiments to investigate the effects of taxpayer assistance services that better inform taxpayers about their tax liability and the audit process the endogenous audit rule we study is simple yet relative to existing work is more likely to characterize the actual incentives facing taxpayers among our findings and in contrast to the case of purely random audits in theory the effect of providing more accurate information on tax liability is ambiguous and we find support empirically for increased tax underreporting even in a setting where theory predicts the opposite this unanticipated result is mitigated when services provide better information on both liability and the audit process suggesting that audit information may be more salient to participants

degreasing the wheels of finance can there be too much trading in financial markets we construct a dynamic general equilibrium model where agents face idiosyncratic liquidity shocks a financial market allows agents to adjust their portfolio of liquid and illiquid assets in response to these shocks the optimal policy is to restrict access to this market because portfolio choices exhibit a pecuniary externality agents do not take into account that by holding more of the liquid asset they not only acquire additional insurance against these liquidity shocks but also marginally increase the value of the liquid asset which improves insurance for other market participants

the evolution of monetary equilibrium abstract the hahn problem is that even if a monetary equilibrium with valued fiat money exists in general equilibrium a nonmonetary equilibrium with a zero price on money generally also exists why should we expect the former over the latter here i consider the preferences that will survive repeated trading in an exchange economy where agents compete in biological fitness with unobservable preferences and positive assortativity in matching evolutionarily stable preferences implement the competitive equilibrium that maximizes the sum of agents fitnesses in a standard bewley townsend model this implies selection of the monetary over the nonmonetary equilibrium and also implies the survival of agents with money in the utility function trust in fiat money is only a recent development and even today such faith is hardly universal cass and shell 1980

manufactured exports of developing countries and their terms of trade since 1965 abstract during the last 40 years since the prebisch singer terms of trade deterioration hypothesis was first proposed the commodity composition of exports of developing countries has undergone a major change in the direction of dominance of manufactures in their nonfuel exports with strong growth in the volume of their manufactured exports but this did not allow developing countries to escape unequal exchange relations with the industrial countries their barter terms of trade in manufactures showed signs of weakness rather than improvement and clearly failed to reflect the respective productivity trends leading to deterioration in factoral terms of trade

sorting versus screening search frictions and competing mechanisms in a market where sellers compete by posting trading mechanisms we allow for a general search technology and show that its features crucially affect the equilibrium mechanism price posting prevails when meetings are rival i e when a meeting by one buyer reduces another buyer s meeting probability under price posting buyers reveal their type by sorting ex ante only if the meeting technology is sufficiently non rival price posting is not an equilibrium multiple buyer types then visit the same sellers who screen ex post through auctions

dollar illiquidity and central bank swap arrangements during the global financial crisis abstract while the global financial crisis was centered in the united states it led to a surprising appreciation in the dollar suggesting global dollar illiquidity in response the federal reserve partnered with other central banks to inject dollars into the international financial system empirical studies of the success of these efforts have yielded mixed results in part because their timing is likely to be endogenous in this paper we examine the cross sectional impact of these interventions theory consistent with dollar appreciation in the crisis suggests that their impact should be greater for countries that have greater exposure to the united states through trade and financial channels less transparent holdings of dollar assets and greater illiquidity difficulties we examine these predictions for observed cross sectional changes in cds spreads using a new proxy for innovations in perceived changes in sovereign risk based upon google search data we find robust evidence that auctions of dollar assets by foreign central banks disproportionately benefited countries that were more exposed to the united states through either trade linkages or asset exposure we obtain weaker results for differences in asset transparency or illiquidity however several of the important announcements concerning the international swap programs disproportionately benefited countries exhibiting greater asset opaqueness

competitive search equilibrium in this paper i construct an equilibrium for markets with frictions which is competitive in the sense that all agents are price takers and maximize utility subject to a set of market parameters i show that the equilibrium allocation is socially optimal i also show how the competitive search equilibrium can be achieved if employers with vacancies can advertise publicly the wages they pay

manufactured exports from developing countries and their terms of trade a reexamination of the sarkar singer results abstract sarkar and singer 1991 argue that the terms of trade for exports of manufactures from developing countries dcs like that for their primary commodity exports have manifested a long term trend favoring the importing developed countries we contend here that the authors have not paid adequate attention to appropriately adjusting the data and that they have misinterpreted the results when these limitations are taken into account a sound basis exists for the conclusion that through rapid expansion of manufactured exports dcs as a group have achieved significant gains in import purchasing power without generating adverse impact on the net barter terms of trade

exports of manufactures by developing countries emerging patterns of trade and location developing countries are rapidly increasing their shares of manufactured trade not just in labour intensive products but also in capital and skill intensive ones their shares are rising particularly rapidly in the high technology area however manufactured exports remain highly concentrated in the developing world with a few countries dominating all forms of export within the successful exporting countries there are significant differences in the technology content of exports these trends are difficult to explain with received trade theory even taking human capital into account or with reference to broad economic policies it is useful to bring in learning along with scale economies increasing returns and agglomeration as determinants of comparative advantage these factors imply market failures and so a role for policy in developing genuine comparative advantages this article suggests that emerging trade and location patterns in the developing work are explained by market imperfections and government policies to overcome them

global apparel production and sweatshop labour can raising retail prices finance living wages this paper provides some empirical evidence on issues raised by the global antisweatshop movement we first consider the relationship between wage and employment growth finding no consistent trade off between them we then measure the share of labour costs in the production of garments in the us and mexico we find that the retail price increases necessary to absorb the costs of raising wages substantially are small well within the range of price increases that polls suggest us consumers are willing to pay we close by considering some implications of these results copyright 2004 oxford university press

the societal benefit of a financial transaction tax we provide a novel justification for a financial transaction tax for economies where agents face stochastic consumption opportunities a financial transaction tax makes it more costly for agents to readjust their portfolios of liquid and illiquid assets in response to liquidity shocks which increase both the demand for and the price of liquid assets the higher price improves liquidity insurance and welfare for other market participants we calibrate the model to u s data and find that the optimal financial transaction tax is 1 6 and that it reduces the volume of financial trading by 17

financial innovations money demand and the welfare cost of inflation in the 1990s the empirical relation between money demand and interest rates began to fall apart we analyze to what extent improved access to money markets can explain this break down for this purpose we construct a microfounded monetary model with a money market which provides insurance against liquidity shocks by offering short term loans and by paying interest on money market deposits we calibrate the model to u s data and find that improved access to money markets can explain the behavior of money demand very well furthermore we show that by allocating money more efficiently better access to money markets decrease the welfare cost of inflation substantially

monopoly with incomplete information recent theoretical research on principal agent relationships has emphasized incentive problems that arise when the parties involved are constrained by either asymmetric information or their inability to monitor each other s actions here we concentrate on the former constraint and consider the case of a single principal the monopolist the main contribution is to show that under a separability assumption strong conclusions can be drawn about the nature of optimal incentive schemes although the primary focus is on optimal quantity discounts in a monopolized market the results also shed light on related topics such as optimal income taxation and commodity bundling

money as a medium of exchange in an economy with artificially intelligent agents abstract we study the exchange economies of kiyotaki and wright 1989 in which agents must use a commodity or fiat money as a medium of exchange if trade is to occur our agents are artificially intelligent and are modeled as using classifier systems to make decisions in the assignment of credit within the classifier systems we introduce some innovations designed to study sequential decision problems in a multi agent environment for most economies that we have simulated trading and consumption patterns converge to a stationary nash equilibrium even if agents start with random rules in economies with multiple equilibria the only equilibrium that emerges in our simulations is the one in which goods with low storage costs play the role of medium of exchange i e the fundamental equilibrium of kiyotaki and wright

a fundamental theory of exchange rates and direct currency trades in this paper we construct a two country search model to determine the nominal exchange rate between two fiat monies our model allows agents to use any currency to trade for goods in all countries however search frictions restrict agents opportunities for instantaneous arbitrage and hence make the nominal exchange rate determinate the nominal exchange rate depends on the two countries economic fundamentals including the stocks and growth rates of the two monies direct exchanges between currencies are essential and they imply a nominal exchange rate that is different from the relative price between the two currencies in the goods markets there are persistent violations of the law of one price and purchasing power parity in equilibrium despite the fact that prices are perfectly flexible and all goods are tradeable between countries nominal and real exchange rates can move together in the steady state in response to money growth shocks

labor market reforms job instability and the flexibility of the employment relationship we endogenize separation in a search model of the labor market and allow for bargaining over the continuation of employment relationships following productivity shocks to take place under asymmetric information in such a setting separation may occur even if continuation of the employment relationship is privately efficient for workers and firms we show that reductions in the cost of separation owing for example to a reduction in firing taxes lead to an increase in job instability and when separation costs are initially high may be welfare decreasing for workers and firms we furthermore show that in response to an exogenous reduction in firing taxes workers and firms may switch from rigid to flexible employment contracts which further amplifies the increase in job instability caused by policy reform

a theory of a generally acceptable medium of exchange and barter abstract this paper develops a model that accounts both for the existence of money defined as a generally acceptable medium of exchange and for the survival of some barter exchange in economies in which money exists in contrast to jones 1976 seminal article in which individuals are restricted to fix trading strategies before entering the market the present model assumes that individuals have conditional trading strategies that allow them to effect exchange according to the types of trades they encounter in the market the analysis shows how decentralized market forces generate money and lead to a unique level of monetization

directed search coordination failure and seller profits an experimental comparison of posted pricing with single and multiple prices we experimentally examine posted pricing and directed search in one treatment capacity constrained sellers post fixed prices which buyers observe before choosing whom to visit in the other firms post both single buyer applied when one buyer visits and multibuyer when multiple buyers visit prices we find based on a 2 2 two buyers and two sellers market and a follow up experiment with 3 and 2 3 markets that multibuyer prices can be lower than single buyer prices or prices in the one price treatment also allowing the multibuyer price does not affect seller profits and increases market frictions

competitive screening under heterogeneous information we study the interplay between informational frictions and second degree price discrimination our theory recognizes that consumers differ in their tastes for quality as well as in the information they possess about available offers which leads to dispersion over price quality menus in equilibrium while firms are ex ante identical we show that their menus are ordered so that more generous menus leave more surplus to consumers of all valuations we explore the cross section of equilibrium menus and variations in market conditions to generate empirical predictions on prices qualities and markups across firms and within a firm s product line for instance more competition may raise prices for low quality goods yet consumers are better off as the qualities they receive also increase the predictions of our model illuminate empirical findings in many markets such as those for cell phone plans yellow pages advertising cable tv and air travel

efficient entry in competing auctions in this paper we consider the efficiency of seller entry into a large market in which sellers post and commit to terms of trade and buyers then allocate themselves across sellers buyers differ in their valuations for the good being sold in this mar ket and sellers are heterogeneous with respect to their reservation values in this environment a second price auction is a simple mechanism which allows the buyers who interact with a particular seller to compete for that seller s good the competing auctions literature e g mcafee 1993 and peters and severinov 1997 considers the characteristics of these auctions as the market gets large and it is now well understood that competition leads each seller to post an efficient mechanism e g a second price auction with reserve price equal to seller reservation value the implications of a large market for seller entry are less well understood in this environment when goods are auctioned buyers extract an information rent from sellers one might therefore expect that the equilibrium level of seller entry into the market would be below the level that a social planner would choose there is however a counterbalancing force namely that when a seller enters the market that seller steals buyers from the sellers who were already there and so potentially reduces the surpluses associated with these sellers our main result is that in a large market when sellers are free to choose their preferred mechanisms these two effects information rent versus business stealing exactly offset each other leading to the socially efficient level of seller entry in addition we show that the equilibrium and social planner allocation of buyers across seller types coincide the model we present is one of competitive search sellers compete for buyers by posting and committing to selling mechanisms and buyers direct their search based on these posted mechanisms moen 1997 and shimer 1996 demonstrate the efficiency of entry in a model of competitive search that has two special features first meetings between buyers and sellers are one on one that is each seller interacts with at most one buyer second there is complete information in the sense that once

ex ante price offers in matching games non steady states a matching problem is considered in which sellers can publicly commit to a trading price that differs from the price at which buyers expect to trade elsewhere in the market when demand and supply are nearly equal the equilibrium ex ante price offer lies below the price associated with the nash bargaining split this relationship reverses when the level of excess demand is large sellers always have an incentive to make ex ante offers when prices elsewhere are determined by nash bargaining this can be interpreted to mean that nash bargaining is an unstable pricing institution copyright 1991 by the econometric society

firm dynamics and pricing under customer capital accumulation abstract in a search model of firm dynamics customer accumulation is shown to affect the lifecycle of firms and the dynamics of markups in response to aggregate demand shocks in the model sellers of different sizes and productivities post dynamic pricing contracts to strike a balance between attracting new customers and exploiting pre existing ones calibrated using establishment level and micro pricing data from the u s retail sector the model provides a quantitatively good fit to the lifecycle and cross sectional properties of retail establishments further the model predicts that markups are procyclical to aggregate demand shocks with a larger contribution by small sellers

pricing and matching with frictions suppose that n buyers each want one unit and m sellers each have one or more units of a good sellers post prices and then buyers choose sellers in symmetric equilibrium similar sellers all post one price and buyers randomize hence more or fewer buyers may arrive than a seller can accommodate we call this frictions we solve for prices and the endogenous matching function for finite n and m and consider the limit as n and m grow the matching function displays decreasing returns but converges to constant returns we argue that the standard matching function in the literature is misspecified and discuss implications for the beveridge curve

on the external validity of laboratory tax compliance experiments i introduction laboratory methods are now widely accepted as a methodological approach in economics and increasingly they have been used to examine specific public policy issues there is much to be gained from careful laboratory experiments they offer a low cost means of testing and replicating policy innovations and they generate precise data on individual behavior thereby allowing estimation of behavioral responses importantly they allow many policy innovations to be introduced singly and exogenously in a controlled environment and as a result laboratory experiments are typically seen as having a high degree of internal validity brewer 2000 campbell and stanley 1966 shadish cook and campbell 2002 because the causal relation between variables can be properly demonstrated however as emphasized by plott 1987 using laboratory experiments can allow more general inferences regarding human behavior only when the setting implemented in the laboratory parallels what is observed in the naturally occurring world even beyond this requirement of parallelism is the need for generalizing behavioral observations from the laboratory to the field or external validity internal validity can be demonstrated through the evaluation of the design however external validity can only be verified empirically and only with respect to the specific setting being investigated this paper investigates the external validity of laboratory experiments and does so in the context of experiments on tax compliance behavior tax evasion is central to many important policy questions current estimates report the tax gap or difference between taxes owed and taxes paid in the united states to be 450 billion annually internal revenue service 2012 beyond these massive revenue losses evasion creates major misallocations in resource use when individuals alter their behavior to cheat on their taxes its presence requires that government expend resources to detect noncompliance to measure its magnitude and to penalize tax evasion evasion alters the distribution of income in arbitrary unpredictable and unfair ways and it may contribute to feelings of unjust treatment and disrespect for the law more broadly it is not possible to understand the true impact of taxation without recognizing the existence and the effects of tax evasion laboratory methods have been used to examine a wide range of policies that may affect the compliance decision policies that have not always proven amenable to either theoretical analyses or empirical analyses with field data however laboratory studies of compliance are sometimes viewed with skepticism the most common criticism is that the student subjects typically used in experiments may not be representative of taxpayers undergraduates may have little experience with filing tax returns and their economic and demographic backgrounds may differ from those of taxpayers another criticism is that the context of laboratory compliance experiments does not closely enough resemble the context in which actual compliance decisions are made as a result there is a concern that experimental results on policy innovations that rely upon student subjects in laboratory compliance experiments cannot be generalized to the population it is this issue that we examine here building on previous research we present several types of evidence on the external validity of experiments on individual compliance decisions a first question examines whether behavior of laboratory participants is replicated by behavior of individuals making a similar decision in the naturally occurring world that is do participants in laboratory experiments exhibit different patterns of behavior than individuals in a similar naturally occurring setting to answer this question we utilize a special data set from the u s internal revenue service irs assembled as part of its national research program nrp

the transition from barter to fiat money how did it become possible to exchange apparently valueless pieces of paper for goods this paper provides an equilibrium account of the transition between barter and fiat money regimes the explanation relies on the intervention of a self interested government that must be able to promise credibly to limit the issue of money to achieve credibility the government must offset the benefits of seigniorage by internalizing some of the macroeconomic externalities generated by the issue of fiat money the government s patience and the extent of its involvement in the economy are key determinants of whether the transition can be accomplished copyright 1995 by american economic association

liquidity a new monetarist perspective this essay surveys the new monetarist approach to liquidity work in this literature strives for empirical and policy relevance plus rigorous foundations questions include what is liquidity is money essential in achieving desirable outcomes which objects can or should serve in this capacity when can asset prices differ from fundamentals what are the functions of commitment and collateral in credit markets how does money interact with credit and intermediation what can and should monetary policy do the research summarized emphasizes the micro structure of frictional transactions and studies how institutions like monetary exchange credit arrangements or intermediation facilitate the exchange process

constrained efficiency with adverse selection and directed search abstract this paper studies constrained efficiency in guerrieri et al s 2010 model of adverse selection and directed search buyers post contracts and sellers with private information about their type direct their search toward their preferred contract buyers and sellers then match bilaterally and trade if the guerrieri shimer wright equilibrium fails to achieve the first best then the planner subject to the frictions of the environment achieves strictly higher welfare than the equilibrium i e the equilibrium is not ex ante constrained efficient under certain conditions the planner achieves an allocation that even pareto dominates the equilibrium i e the equilibrium is not interim constrained efficient under other conditions the planner can completely undo the effects of adverse selection and achieves the first best cross subsidization is the key to these results

money and price posting under private information abstract we study price posting with undirected search in a search theoretic monetary model with divisible money and divisible goods ex ante homogeneous buyers experience match specific preference shocks in bilateral trades the shocks follow a continuous uniform distribution and the realizations of the shocks are private information we show that there exists a unique monetary equilibrium for generic values of the inflation rate in equilibrium each seller posts a continuous pricing schedule that exhibits quantity discounts buyers may spend nothing a fraction or all of their money holdings depending on their preference shock realizations inflation reduces the extent of non linear pricing the model captures the hot potato effect of inflation along both the extensive margin as an increase in the trading probability and the intensive margin as higher fractions of money being spent

tax evasion under random audits with uncertain detection abstract we show that an increase in taxpayer uncertainty about the amount of tax evasion that will be detected if an audit is undertaken increases compliance for prudent taxpayers if they believe that they will be assessed at least the amount of tax evaded thus a policy that fosters detection uncertainty is more likely to encourage compliance the higher is the penalty for tax evasion

general equilibrium with nonconvexities and money in a general equilibrium economy with nonconvexities there are sunspot equilibria with good welfare properties sunspots can ameliorate the effects of the nonconvexities for these economies we show that agents act as if they have quasi linear utility functions we use this result to construct a new model of monetary exchange along the lines of lagos and wright where trade occurs in both centralized and decentralized markets but instead of quasi linear preferences we assume general preferences but with indivisible labor this suggests that modern monetary theory is more robust than one might have thought it also constitutes progress on the classic problem of integrating monetary economics and general equilibrium theory

openness and wage inequality in developing countries the latin american challenge to east asian conventional wisdom the experience of east asia in the 1960s and 1970s supports the theory that greater openness to trade tends to narrow the wage gap between skilled and unskilled workers in developing countries in latin america since the mid 1980s however increased openness has widened wage differentials this conflict of evidence is probably not the result of differences between east asia and latin america instead the conflict is probably the result of differences between the 1960s and the 1980s specifically the entry of china into the world market and perhaps the advent of new technology biased against unskilled workers

manufactured exports and terms of trade of developing countries evidence from sri lanka terms of trade implications of diversification into manufactured exports in a traditional primary exporting country are examined in the light of the sri lankan experience over the past two decades the empirical analysis focuses on trends in both commodity and income terms of trade employing a methodology which takes care of the spurious regression problem the results suggest that contrary to the new terms of trade pessimism export diversification has brought about significant terms of trade gains for the sri lankan economy overall the study casts doubt on the robustness of results coming from analyses of price trends in aggregate manufactured exports and calls for systematic time profile analyses of the countries which have achieved significant export diversification in order to inform the policy debate

inflation output and welfare this paper studies the effects of anticipated inflation on aggregate output and welfare within a search theoretic framework we allow money holders to choose the intensities with which they search for trading partners so inflation affects the frequency of trade as well as the quantity of output produced in each trade we consider the standard pricing mechanism for search models i e ex post bargaining as well as a notion of competitive pricing if prices are bargained over the equilibrium is generically inefficient and an increase in inflation reduces buyers search intensities output and welfare if prices are posted and buyers can direct their search search intensities are increasing with inflation for low inflation rates and decreasing for high inflation rates the friedman rule achieves the first best allocation and inflation always reduces welfare even though it can have a positive effect on output for low inflation rates

sticky prices a new monetarist approach why do some sellers set nominal prices that apparently do not respond to changes in the aggregate price level in many models prices are sticky by assumption here it is a result we use search theory with two consequences prices are set in dollars since money is the medium of exchange and equilibrium implies a nondegenerate price distribution when the money supply increases some sellers may keep prices constant earning less per unit but making it up on volume so profit stays constant the calibrated model matches price change data well but in contrast to typical sticky price models money is neutral jel e52 e31 e42

search money and inflation under private information abstract i study monetary exchange and inflation when buyers have private information about their willingness to pay for certain goods introducing imperfect information in the lagos wright a unified framework for monetary theory and policy analysis j polit economy 113 3 2005 463 484 economy shows that the existence of monetary equilibrium is a more robust feature of the environment in general my model has a monetary steady state in which only a proportion of the agents hold money agents who do not hold money cannot participate in trade in the decentralized market the proportion of agents holding money is endogenous and depends negatively on the level of expected inflation as in lagos and wright s model in equilibrium there is a positive welfare cost of expected inflation but the origins of this cost are very different

precautionary balances and the velocity of circulation of money the observed low velocity of circulation of money implies that households hold more money than they normally spend a natural explanation for this behavior is that households face uncertain expenditure needs so they have a precautionary motive for holding money we investigate the precautionary demand for money in a search model where households are subject to preference shocks the model predicts that the velocity of circulation of money is not only low but also interest elastic the model closely fits united states data on the velocity of circulation of money and interest rates that span the period 1892 2003 the empirical analysis reveals a dramatic reduction in precautionary balances towards the end of our sample probably linked to innovations in the information technology this drop in precautionary balances is crucial for important issues of monetary economics such as the elasticity of the demand for money and the welfare cost of inflation

inflation and productive activity in a multiple matching model of money abstract this paper investigates the relationship between money growth inflation and productive activity in a dynamic general equilibrium multiple matching framework where trade frictions are manifested by limited consumption variety productive activity and matching in the goods market are endogenized by a time allocation decision of work and search effort we find that a high degree of complementarity between participation in the labor and goods markets creates a channel by which inflation can positively influence production and output this feature arises when household preferences for consumption variety is sufficiently large and it can also lead to the multiplicity of monetary equilibria

on money as a medium of exchange we analyze economies in which individuals specialize in consumption and production and meet randomly over time in a way that implies that trade must be bilateral and quid pro quo nash equilibria in trading strategies are characterized certain goods emerge endogenously as media of exchange or commodity money depending both on their intrinsic properties and on extrinsic beliefs there are also equilibria with genuine fiat currency circulating as the general medium of exchange we find that equilibria are not generally pareto optimal and that introducing fiat currency into a commodity money economy may unambiguously improve welfare velocity acceptability and liquidity are discussed

existence of steady states with positive consumption in the kiyotaki wright model we prove the general existence of steady states with positive consumption in an n goods and fiat money version of the kiyotaki wright model by admitting mixed strategies we also show that there always exists a steady state in which everyone accepts a least costly to store object in particular if fiat money is one such object then there always exists a monetary steady state we also establish some other properties of steady states and comment on the relationship between steady states and incentive feasible allocations

competition among sellers who offer auctions instead of prices abstract in this paper we study a large market in which sellers compete by offering auctions to buyers instead of simple fixed price contracts two variants of the model are studied one extends a model first analyzed by wolinsky rev econ stud 55 1988 71 84 in which buyers learn their valuations only after meeting sellers the other variant extends the model of mcafee econometrica61 1993 1281 1312 in which buyers know their valuations before they choose among available auctions the equilibrium array of auctions is characterized for each case and the efficiency properties of the equilibria are analyzed journal of economic literatureclassification numbers d41 d44 d82

competitive pricing and efficiency in search equilibrium we consolidate and generalize some results on price determination and efficiency in search equilibrium extending models by rubinstein and wolinsky and by gale heterogeneous buyers and sellers meet according to a general matching technology and prices are determined by a general bargaining condition when the discount rate r and search costs converge to 0 we show that prices in all exchanges are the same and equal the competitive market clearing price given positive search costs efficiency obtains iff bargaining satisfies hosios condition and r 0 when prices are set by third party market makers however we show that search equilibrium is necessarily efficient

decentralized international exchange traditional models of international trade take place within trading environments in which trade is coordinated by a walrasian auctioneer who instantly matches buyers and sellers in world markets this assertion seems inconsistent with evidence suggesting that trading arrangements seem to economize on transactions costs associated with international trade recognizing these insights we depart from standard models of international trade by incorporating the difficulties in the coordination of exchange within a two country random matching model of international trade we capture a motivation for trade through comparative advantage and interpret trade across economies to be associated with an agent s endogenous choice to participate in foreign markets although an individual may decide to search abroad to obtain additional gains from trade resulting from comparative advantage she is less likely to meet trading partners abroad as search frictions are higher in the foreign country than in the domestic market using this framework we show that international trade is associated with convergence in relative prices across countries we also show that the extent of market frictions in the foreign country affects relative prices the volume of international trade and welfare levels due to market participation externalities associated with international trade we show that a movement from autarky to free trade may actually lower welfare levels we conclude by examining the possible inefficiencies associated with international trade due to the decentralized nature of exchange and the policy implications of our model

why fiat money is a safe asset abstract this paper presents a model in which 1 fiat money has strictly positive value in the unique trembling hand equilibrium this holds as each bank note is both a a witness for the existence of some agent in the economy with debt backed by collateral and b the only matter that allows the debtor to settle her debt the fear to lose the collateral creates future money demand by the debtor and thereby ensures positive money value 2 money is a safe asset as not only a single but all debtors in the economy demand money so that idiosyncratic shocks to solvency wash out by this mechanism fiat money is essentially equivalent to large securitized pools of debt which 3 can establish the pooling allocation even if pooling itself is infeasible

a theory of commerce abstract the theory of commerce advanced here captures prominent features of retail trade large employment congestion effects anonymous posted prices and quantity discounts this theory is built around a directed search model where buyers preferences are private information the analytical solution is easily inserted in a neoclassical growth framework in this framework the parameters of retail trade are calibrated using commercial margins and employment welfare properties depend on the sellers ability to charge two tier prices with two tier prices the directed search equilibrium is efficient otherwise it is not this contrasts with the full information benchmark where directed search is always efficient

precautionary demand for money in a monetary business cycle model we investigate the quantitative implications of precautionary demand for money for business cycle dynamics of velocity of money and other nominal aggregates there is a standing challenge in monetary macroeconomics to account for business cycle dynamics of nominal variables as previous business cycle models that have tried to incorporate demand for money have failed to generate realistic predictions in this regard our stance is that part of this failure results from the fact that demand for money in those previous models is deterministic since agents in them face only aggregate risk whereas we believe idiosyncratic risk to be important as well we conduct the exercise inside a monetary search model as our additional goal is to put to the test a recent generation of such frictional models to examine whether their quantitative predictions are realistic and whether they generate additional insight into business cycle data that non search models of money cannot generate on the first question our results suggest that precautionary demand for money plays a substantial role in accounting for business cycle behavior of velocity of money and other nominal variables such as inflation and nominal interest rates on the second question our preliminary results indicate that the search frictions generate discernible though small quantitative effects helping the model account for relevant properties of the data but not very significantly the biggest quantitative potential for search frictions in this setting is in the dynamic implications they generate for inventories and markups in the retail sector assessment of this potential is in progress

a search theoretic approach to monetary economics the essential function of money is its role as a medium of exchange the authors formalize this idea using a search theoretic equilibrium model of the exchange process that captures the double coincidence of wants problem with pure barter one advantage of the framework described here is that it is very tractable the authors also show that the model can be used to addre ss some substantive issues in monetary economics including the potenti al welfare enhancing role of money the interaction between specializat ion and monetary exchange and the possibility of equilibria with multip le fiat currencies copyright 1993 by american economic association

dark matter black holes and old fashioned exploitation transnational corporations and the us economy in advanced economies foreign direct investment fdi is usually a two way process involving both inwards and outwards investment often in the same industries why then is us fdi so profitable whilst fdi in the usa is conspicuous in its unprofitability using sectoral based data from 1999 to 2005 to investigate this puzzle i find that us owned fdi usdia demonstrates far higher returns particularly relative to foreign owned direct investment in the usa fdius but also compared to all us based industries nipa fdius is the worst performing of all three portfolios exhibiting the poorest and most volatile returns for the period examined these results hold for both the aggregate non financial data as well as for the narrow measured value added for the period tested us inwards fdi isn t employment generating whereas us direct investment abroad produces the fastest gains in labour productivity output employment investment expenditures and tax revenues whilst it is debatable that dark matter or intangible proprietary assets drive superior relative returns to usdia labour exploitation appears to play a role increases in labour productivity coupled with declining wage shares for all three portfolios especially pronounced for usdia suggest race to bottom outcomes a burgeoning aspect of this race is cross border profit shifting to minimise firms global tax burdens i suspect but am unable to confirm that profits are being shifted overseas vanishing into the black holes of tax havens transfer pricing and other modes of tax avoidance

inflation and welfare in retail markets prior production and imperfectly directed search this paper considers the effect of monetary policy and inflation on retail markets goods are dated and produced prior to being retailed buyers direct their search on price and general quality buyers match specific tastes are private information sellers set the same price for all buyers some of whom do not value the good highly enough to buy it the market economy is typically inefficient as a social planner would have the good consumed under free entry of sellers the friedman rule is optimal policy when the upper bound on the number of participating sellers binds moderate levels of inflation can be welfare improving

low wage manufacturing and global commodity chains a model in the unequal exchange tradition the institutional setting of subcontracted manufacturing has a profound impact on how the benefits of trade are distributed this paper develops a model that combines insights from unequal exchange theorists and global commodity chain analysis to clarify the distributive dynamics of production networks in which subcontracting and branding are defining features in this framework the ability of productivity growth to increase income from exports is constrained and depends on how the benefits of productivity improvements are captured as lower consumer prices or higher rents for brand name multinationals increasing consumption in affluent consumer markets raises export earnings however developing countries acting alone are constrained in their ability to affect the demand side of global commodity chains instead supply side policies to support industrial upgrading represent a more viable option for raising incomes copyright 2006 oxford university press

generalized search theoretic models of monetary exchange abstract virtually all simple search models of money assume agents with money cannot produce and so everyone has either 0 or 1 units of money in steady state we alternatively assume agents can always produce and simply restrict money inventories to 0 or 1 this seems better for many issues for example in the standard model it is difficult to interpret increases in the money supply because increasing the fraction of agents holding money decreases the economy s productive capacity our model avoids these problems and thus delivers more natural and simpler implications in many contexts we compare results on existence multiplicity and welfare across models

compensation for quality difference in a search model of money we study an economy in which there is always double coincidence of wants agents have perfect information about qualities of goods and there are no transaction costs the hold up problem arises because efforts invested in improving quality prior to search may not be compensated in the market situations in which barter fails to motivate quality improvement are identified with money however the extra effort in quality improvement will be compensated when high quality good producers trade with agents holding both the low quality good and money injection of money can induce almost all agents to produce the high quality good

equilibrium wage dispersion and interindustry wage differentials this paper develops a search theoretic explanation of interindustry wage differentials given coordination problems in the labor market the probability of filling a vacancy is an increasing function of the wage offered in equilibrium firms that find vacancies more costly will offer higher wages the model thus explains the persistence of interindustry wage differentials and their correlation with industry average capital labor ratio and profitability additionally the model predicts that high wage firms will receive more applications per job opening and that wages in the labor market will behave as strategic complements

viewpoint a microfoundation of monetary economics in this lecture i explain what the microfoundations of money are about and why they are necessary for monetary economics then i review recent developments of a particular microfoundation of money commonly known as the search theory of money finally i outline some unresolved issues dans cette presentation l auteur explique ce que sont les microfondations de la monnaie et pourquoi elles sont necessaires a l economie monetaire ensuite il passe en revue certains developpements recents d une microfondation particuliere de la monnaie connue sous le nom de theorie de la recherche de la monnaie enfin l auteur fait le tour d un ensemble de problemes qui restent sans solution pour le moment

frictional goods markets theory and applications we analyse dynamic general equilibrium models with more or less directed search by informed buyers and random search by uninformed buyers this nests existing specifications and generates new insights a quantitative application concerns the welfare cost of inflation which is known to be quite high with pure random search and low with pure directed search our calibration implies the impact of inflation is fairly low in part because in addition to the usual costs it provides benefits by more heavily taxing high price sellers that inefficiently profit from exploiting the uninformed other applications analyse analytically and numerically changes in credit conditions and information

incentives in competitive search equilibrium this paper proposes a labor market model with job search frictions where workers have private information on match quality and eort firms use wage contracts to motivate workers in addition wages are also used to attract employees we de ne and characterize competitive search equilibrium in this context and show that it satis es a simple modi ed hosios rule the model is used to address the shimer puzzle related to the low volatility of the unemployment rate relative to the volatility of output observed in the data we nd that private information may increase the responsiveness of the unemployment rate to changes in productivity and in particular to changes in

inflation and unemployment in the long run we study the long run relation between money measured by inflation or interest rates and unemployment we first document in the data a positive relation between these variables at low frequencies we then develop a framework where unemployment and money are both modeled using microfoundations based on search and bargaining theory providing a unified theory for analyzing labor and goods markets the calibrated model shows that money can account for a sizable fraction of trends in unemployment we argue it matters qualitativelynand quantitatively whether one uses monetary theory based on search and bargaining or an alternative ad hoc specification

the assignment of workers to jobs in an economy with coordination frictions this paper studies the assignment of heterogeneous workers to heterogeneous jobs owing to the anonymity of a large labor market workers use mixed strategies when applying for jobs this randomness generates coordination frictions two workers may apply for a particular job whereas an identical job gets no applications the model generates assortative matching with a positive but imperfect correlation between matched workers and firms types it predicts that a worker s wage is increasing in her job s productivity and a firm s profit is increasing in its employees productivity the model also yields a version of the welfare theorems

a contribution to the pure theory of money abstract this article analyzes a general equilibrium model with search frictions and differentiated commodities because of the many differentiated commodities barter is difficult in that it requires a double coincidence of wants and this provides a medium of exchange role for fiat currency we prove the existence of equilibrium with valued fiat money and show it is robust to certain changes in the environment rate of return dominance liquidity and the welfare implications of fiat money are discussed

an experimental study of compliance and leverage in auditing and regulatory enforcement evidence suggests that a large majority of firms and individuals comply with regulations and tax laws even though the frequency of inspections and audits is often low moreover fines for noncompliance are also typically low when regulatory violations are discovered these observations are not consistent with static compliance models harrington 1988 modified these static models by specifying a dynamic game in which some agents have an incentive to comply even when the cost of compliance each period is greater than the expected penalty this paper reports a laboratory experiment based on the harrington model framework in which subjects move between two inspection groups that differ in the probability of inspection and severity of fine subjects decide to comply or not in the presence of low medium or high compliance costs enforcement leverage arises in the harrington model from movement between the inspection groups based on previous observed compliance and noncompliance our results indicate that consistent with the model violation rates increase when compliance costs become higher and as the probability of switching groups becomes lower behavior does not change as sharply as the model predicts however since violation rates do not jump from 0 to 1 as parameters vary across critical thresholds a simple model of bounded rationality explains these deviations from optimal behavior

efficient unemployment insurance this paper constructs a tractable general equilibrium model of search with risk aversion an increase in risk aversion reduces wages unemployment and investment unemployment insurance has the opposite effect insured workers seek high wage jobs with high unemployment risk an economy with risk neutral workers achieves maximal output without any unemployment insurance but an economy with risk averse workers requires a positive level of unemployment insurance to maximize output therefore moderate unemployment insurance not only improves risk sharing but also increases output

the role of search frictions in the long run relationships between inflation unemployment and capital abstract this paper explores the long run relationships between inflation unemployment and capital accumulation by proposing a model with search frictions in both goods and labor markets this framework allows us to identify a negative extensive margin effect of inflation on the number of firms demanding capital and a positive intensive margin effect of inflation on the capital demanded per firm the two effects together generate a hump shaped relationship between long run inflation and aggregate capital these results are consistent with our empirical evidence from a cross section of 76 countries which suggests a non monotonic relationship between inflation and investment to gdp ratio in the long run our calibrated results are also consistent with empirical findings from the u s data on the effect of inflation on capital stock unemployment and the real interest rates

capitalism and socialism a review of kornai s dynamism rivalry and the surplus economy understanding the nature of capitalism has been a central theme of economics the collapse of the eastern bloc and the global financial crisis spurred the reemergence of the political economy as a new frontier and the revival of interest in the nature of capitalism janos kornai s book dynamism rivalry and the surplus economy two essays on the nature of capitalism fills an important intellectual gap in understanding the dynamic nature of capitalism by comparing it with its mirror image socialism to further develop the themes contained in the book serious challenges are posed theoretically and empirically as well as in subjects such as hybrid capitalism