Post by serragoosenburg on Dec 27, 2015 2:31:07 GMT 4
Safe Assets as Commodity Money
Maya Eden
World Bank - Development Research Group (DECRG)
Benjamin S. Kay
U.S. Treasury Office of Financial Research
November 25, 2015
OFR WP 15-23
Abstract:
This paper presents a model in which safe assets are systemic because they are the medium of exchange for risky assets. Like commodity money, these assets are costly to produce and have some intrinsic value, resulting in (a) non-neutrality and (b) overproduction. Quantitatively, the welfare consequences of these inefficiencies depend on the costs of producing safe assets, which can be inferred from the equilibrium value of the liquidity premium. When the model is calibrated to plausible liquidity premia the resulting inefficiencies are not large.
Number of Pages in PDF File: 35
SSRN-id2695517.pdf (865.99 KB)
