David Andolfatto

The Role of Independence in the Green-Lin Diamond-Dybvig Model

Green and Lin study a version of the Diamond-Dybvig model with a finite number of agents, independence (independent determination of each agents type), and sequential service. For special preferences, they show that the ex ante first-best allocation is the unique equilibrium outcome of the model with private information about types. Via a simple argument, it is shown that uniqueness of the truth-telling equilibrium holds for general preferences, and, in particular, for a constrained-efficient allocation whether first-best or not. The crucial assumption is independence.

Unemployment insurance and labor-market activity in Canada

Abstract In 1972, the Canadian Federal government implemented a wide-ranging set of reforms to the nations unemployment insurance system. The economic impact of these reforms are evaluated in the context of a dynamic general equilibrium model of labor-market search. A calibrated version of the model estimates that the 1972 reforms had only a modest impact on unemployment, but led to a significant increase in the rate of labor-market turnover, particularly on flows into and out of the labor force. The model also estimates that on net, the reforms likely contributed to an increase in social welfare by reducing the level of idiosyncratic income risk.

A Theory of Inalienable Property Rights

Why do democratic societies often impose legal restrictions that render various assets or entitlements inalienable to the individual? The explanation proposed here is that these constraints arise as an institutional response against financial markets that, in a sense, work “too well.” That is, I demonstrate how a well‐functioning financial market can potentially work against a social policy designed to ensure a basic minimum standard of living for all types of individuals. Inalienable property rights and debt constraints emerge as a natural institutional response to the improvident tendencies of some members of society when a majority of individuals share a common distaste for neighborhood squalor.

A Theory of Money and Banking

We construct a simple environment that combines a limited communication friction and a limited information friction in order to generate a role for money and intermediation. We ask whether there is any reason to expect the emergence of a banking sector (i.e., institutions that combine the business of money creation with the business of intermediation). In our model the unique equilibrium is characterized, in part, by the existence of an agent that: (1) creates money (a debt instrument that circulates as a means of payment); (2) lends it out (swapping it for less liquid forms of debt); (3) is responsible for monitoring those agents in control of the capital backing the illiquid debt; and (4) collects on money loans as they come due. Furthermore, the bank money in our model is a debt instrument that embeds within it important stipulations that are found in actual private money instruments. Thus, our model goes some way in addressing the questions of why private money takes the form that it does, as well as why private money is typically supplied by banks.

Optimal disclosure policy and undue diligence

While both public and private financial agencies supply asset markets with large quantities of information, they do not necessarily disclose all asset-related information to the general public. This observation leads us to ask what principles might govern the optimal disclosure policy for an asset manager or financial regulator. To investigate this question, we study the properties of a dynamic economy endowed with a risky asset, and with individuals that lack commitment. Information relating to future asset returns is available to society at zero cost. Legislation dictates whether this information is to be made public or not. Given the nature of our environment, nondisclosure is generally desirable. This result is overturned, however, when individuals are able to access hidden information - what we call undue diligence - at sufficiently low cost. Information disclosure is desirable, in other words, only in the event that individuals can easily discover it for themselves.

Optimal Team Contracts

In this paper, the authors evaluate certain challenges put forth by Mukesh Eswaran and Ashok Kotwal (1984) and Eric Rasmusen (1987) concerning the legitimacy of Bengt Holmstroms (1982) proposed solution for the problem of moral hazard in teams. They demonstrate that the argument put forth by Rasmusen hinges on some rather extreme conditions concerning the verifiability of individual actions relating to renegotiation attempts; relaxing these conditions renders efficient budget-balancing contracts infeasible, as argued by Holmstrom. Second, the authors demonstrate that the criticism put forth by Eswaran and Kotwal is invalid, at least if one insists that clandestine deals must satisfy the same incentive-compatibility conditions required of the principal-agent contract proposed by Holmstrom.

Incentive-Feasible Deflation

For competitive economies in which the real rate of return on money is too low, the standard prescription is to engineer a deflation—that is, to operate monetary policy according to the Friedman rule. Implicit in this recommendation is the availability of a lump-sum tax instrument. In this paper, I view lump-sum tax obligations as a form of debt subject to default. While individuals may want to honor such obligations ex ante, a lack of commitment (the sine qua non of modern monetary theory) may prevent them from the following through on their promises ex post. When this is the case, there may exist an incentive-induced limit to deflationary policy.Lagos and Wright (2005) demonstrate how the essential properties of a money-search model are preserved in an environment that is rendered highly tractable with the use of quasi-linear preferences. In this paper, I show that this same innovation can be applied to closely related environments used elsewhere in the literature that study insurance and credit markets under limited commitment and private information. The analysis demonstrates clearly how insurance, credit, and money are interrelated in terms of their basic functions. The analysis also leads to a heretofore neglected result pertaining to the Friedman rule. In particular, I find that the same frictions that render money essential may at the same time operate to render the Friedman rule infeasible. Thus, even if the Friedman rule is a desirable policy, an incentive-induced lower bound on the rate of deflation may nevertheless entail a strictly postive rate of inflation.

US Labour Market Policy and the Canada-US Unemployment Rate Gap

In this paper, we investigate the extent to which changes in US labour market policy in the 1980s may have contributed to the emergence of an unemployment rate gap between Canada and the United States. In that decade, unemployment insurance benefits became taxable, income tax rates fell substantially, and various administrative changes were made that effectively tightened unemployment insurance eligibility requirements. These policy changes are evaluated in the context of a computable equilibrium model of the labour market. Our estimates suggest that all of these reforms together can account for no more than a 0.4 percentage point decline in the US natural rate of unemployment; a combined effect which accounts for 20 percent of the unemployment rate gap.

Information Disclosure and Exchange Media

When commitment is lacking, intertemporal trade is facilitated with the use of exchange media--interpreted broadly to include monetary and collateral assets. We study the properties of a model commonly used to motivate monetary exchange, extended to include a physical asset whose expected short-run return is subject to a news shock, but whose expected long-run return is stable. The nondisclosure of news enhances the assets property as an exchange medium, and generally improves social welfare. When a nondisclosure policy is infeasible, the framework admits a role for government debt, including fiat money. When lump-sum taxation is not permitted, fiat money may still improve welfare--but only if its circulation is supported by a cash-in-advance constraint. (Copyright: Elsevier)

A note on the societal benefits of illiquid bonds

Kocherlakota (2003) provides an example of a monetary economy where efficiency is enhanced with the introduction of a nominally risk-free bond that is specifically designed to be illiquid. The societal benefit of an illiquid bond in his example, however, is transitory, and he does not characterize an optimal policy. I use an analytically tractable framework to characterize an optimal intervention and to show that the purported benefits of an illiquid bond market persist in a steady state.