Modern payment instruments can be complex. Yet, many of these can be interpreted as a form of money or credit, which are rather primitive instruments. We use a simple model of a monetary economy to provide an overview of some of the fundamental questions in the literature on payments. Why do...

We construct a search-theoretic model where fiat money coexists with real assets, and all assets can be used as a media of exchange. The terms of trade in bilateral matches are determined by a pairwise Pareto-efficient pricing mechanism. We do not have to appeal to exogenous liquidity...

Intro -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- Models Where Money Is Useless -- Models Where Money Is Essential -- Beyond Monetary Exchange: Credit and Liquidity -- Tour of the Book -- Chapter 1. The Basic Environment -- 1.1 Benchmark Model -- 1.2 Variants of the Benchmark Model -- 1.3...

This paper studies the optimal bankruptcy policy for repurchase agreements (repos) with respect to their exemption from the automatic stay of bankruptcy. The exemption from automatic stay has been one of the key contributors to the development of the repo market as a major source of funding for...

The business of money creation is conceptually distinct from that of intermediation. Yet, these two activities are frequently--but not always--combined together in the form of a banking system. We develop a simple model to examine the question: When is banking essential? There is a role for...