Coalition-Proof Trade and the Friedman Rule in the Lagos-Wright Model

The Lagos-Wright model-a monetary model in which pairwise meetings alternate in time with a centralized meeting-has been extensively analyzed, but always using particular trading protocols. Here, trading protocols are replaced by two alternative notions of implementability: one that allows only individual defections and one that also allows cooperative defections in meetings. It is shown that the first-best allocation is implementable under the stricter notion without taxation if people are sufficiently patient. And, if people are free to skip the centralized meeting, then lump-sum taxation used to pay interest on money does not enlarge the set of implementable allocations. (c) 2009 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved..