We study the design of optimal monetary policy under uncertainty using a Markov jumplinear-quadratic (MJLQ) approach. We approximating the uncertainty that policymakers face by different discrete modes in a Markov chain, and by taking mode-dependent linear-quadratic approximations of the underlying model. This allows us to apply a powerful methodology with convenient solution algorithms that we...

In this paper the case made by Klein (1975) and Hayek (1976) for competitive bank monies is reconsidered. To do so we build a model of the demand for bank money that derives from money’s ability to separate commodity purchases from sales across time and so avoid the trading costs implied by barter and the double coincidence of wants. Such a model allows us to view the bank cheating or time inco...

This paper examines the issues related to the competition between two currencies in an agent-based computational economic model. The economic environment is a two-country overlapping generations economy with no restrictions on foreign currency holdings. Governments of both countries nance their de cits via seignorage. Agents make decisions about their savings and portfolio decisions. They use t...

Monetary economists have long recognized a tension between the bene…ts of fractional reserve banking, such as the ability to undertake more pro…table (long-term) investment opportunities, and the di¢ culties associated with it, such as the risk of insolvency for each bank and the associated losses to bank liability holders. I show that a speci…c banking arrangement (a joint-liability scheme) pr...

Monetary economists have long recognized a tension between the bene…ts of fractional reserve banking, such as the ability to undertake more pro…table (long-term) investment opportunities, and the di¢ culties associated with fractional reserve banking, such as the risk of insolvency for each bank. The goal of this paper is to show that a speci…c form of private bank coalition (a joint-liability ...

We show that a competitive banking system is inconsistent with an optimum quantity of private money. Because bankers cannot commit to their promises and the composition of their assets is not publicly observable, a positive franchise value is required to induce the full convertibility of bank liabilities. Under perfect competition, a positive franchise value can be obtained only if the return o...

Price level targeting (without base drift) and in‡ation targeting (with base drift) are compared with persistence in output (generated by sticky prices, for instance). Counter to conventional wisdom, price level targeting results in lower short-run in‡ation variability than in‡ation targeting (if output is at least moderately persistent). Price level targeting also eliminates any average in‡ati...

The names Milton Friedman and John Taylor are associated with different monetary policy rules; but, as shown in this paper, the difference between their perceptions of how the economy works is not great. The monetary policy rules advanced by Taylor and Friedman are compared by linking the rules to the two economists’ underlying views about nominal rigidity, the source of trade-offs, the sources...

Networks constructed from credit relationships in the interbank market have been found to exhibit disassortative mixing together with a scale-free degree distribution, in contrast to most social networks that are assortative and not necessarily scale-free. This provokes the question whether generating mechanisms for scale-free networks have enough flexibility to generate both assortative and di...

Closed exchange and production-and-exchange economies may have multiple equilibria, a fact that is usually ignored in macroeconomic models. Our basic argument is that default and bankruptcy laws are required to prevent strategic default, and these laws can also serve to provide the conditions for uniqueness. In this paper we report experimental evidence on the effectiveness of this approach to ...