Stacey L. Schreft

The effects of open market operations in a model of intermediation and growth

This article presents a monetary growth model in which spatial separation and limited communication create a role for banks. Monetary policy interacts with the financial systems liquidity provision to affect the existence, multiplicity, and dynamical properties of equilibria. Moderate levels of risk aversion and tight monetary policy can lead to multiple steady rates. Dynamical equilibria can be indeterminate, with oscillatory paths. Thus financial market frictions are a source of indeterminacies and endogenous volatility. Under plausible conditions, tight monetary policy raises the nominal interest rate and inflation rate and reduces long-run output. Thus, a central banks liquidity provision can promote growth.

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 economys 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 reallocates their portfolios. If some investors are irrationally exuberant, the financial structure remains intact longer. In fact, financial collapse occurs sooner when almost all investors are rationally exuberant than when they are irrationally exuberant. Additionally, a financial crisis initiated by real shocks is indistinguishable from one caused solely by the presence of rationally apprehensive investors in a fundamentally sound economy. Policies that make portfolio linkages more resilient can improve welfare.

The evolution of cash transactions: some implications for monetary policy

This paper considers the implications for monetary policy of a decreasing demand for outside money. It finds that even perpetual declines in the demand for base money pose no threat to the traditional methods employed for conducting monetary policy. The effects of such reductions in the demand for central bank liabilities, however, do depend on how monetary policy is conducted. Four monetary policy regimes are analyzed. With a policy of nominal-interest-rate targeting, a secular decline in the volume of cash transactions unambiguously leads to accelerating inflation. A policy of maintaining a fixed composition of government liabilities leads to accelerating (decelerating) inflation if agents have sufficiently high (low) levels of risk aversion. Inflation targeting produces falling nominal and real interest rates, while a policy of fixing the rate of money growth can easily lead to indeterminacy and endogenous oscillation in interest rates. It is argued that a policy of fixing the composition of government liabilities has several advantages if it is known that agents are not too risk averse and that the asymptotic demand for base money is small. If this information is not known, then interest-rate or inflation targeting have an advantage because their consequences are not sensitive to such environmental features.

The Conduct of Monetary Policy with a Shrinking Stock of Government Debt

This article considers the consequences for a central bank of a declining stock of government debt. The model has a treasury that taxes, spends, and issues debt; a central bank that conducts open market operations in treasury debt; and banks that intermediate private savings. It suggests that a sufficiently small stock of debt can put an economy on the Pareto inferior side of the seigniorage Laffer curve, implying unnecessarily high inflation. If there is also a primary budget deficit, equilibrium might not exist. Discount-window lending is a potentially desirable alternative to open market operations, especially if the loans are not subsidized.

The Social Value of Risk-free Government Debt

This paper considers whether eliminating the stock of government debt outstanding would reduce welfare. It models an economy with three assets—currency, government bonds, and storage, a transactions role for money, and a demand for liquidity and thus a role for banks. The Friedman rule is not optimal in this economy, so there is potentially a role for interest-bearing, risk-free government bonds. Because the government must raise enough revenue to meet its interest obligations on any bonds outstanding, the social value of government debt hinges on whether the benefits from greater portfolio diversification outweigh the costs associated with the necessary revenue-raising efforts. The paper shows that a positive stock of government debt is optimal only if interest payments on the debt are financed via money creation, agents are not too risk averse, there is a primary government budget deficit, and the economy is operating on the bad side of the Laffer curve. But under these conditions, welfare would be even higher if monetary policy were conducted to put the economy on the good side of the Laffer curve and there were no government bonds outstanding. Thus, there is little support for keeping a stock of interest-bearing, risk-free government debt outstanding.

Private Money, Settlement, and Discount: A Comment

An internal combustion engine provides mechanical torque and electrical energy for the operation of remote-controlled standstill air conditioning (remote start) in conventional vehicles. A new terminal is introduced for the remote start. A retrofit solution is offered for this terminal concept. A retrofit relay is provided which is plugged into a free relay receptacle of the motor vehicle. The retrofit relay has a contact which is connected to an output of a body control module which signals the receipt of a remote control command for initiating the “standstill air conditioning” operating state. The retrofit relay also has a contact which is connected to an output of a body control module which signals the receipt of an “ignition on” command for initiating the “driving mode” operating state. The retrofit relay includes a logic circuit which carries out a combination of the signals of the fourth and the fifth relay contacts.