We explore monetary policy in a world without fractional reserve banking. In our world, banks are purely transaction institutions. Money is a form of government debt that bears interest, which can be negative as well as positive. Services of money are a factor of production. We show that the...

<i>"[The colonies] cannot keep Gold and Silver among them sufficient for the Purposes of their internal Commerce... Paper Bills called Bills of Credit or Paper Money have therefore in the colonies long been substituted for real Money. Various Ways of issuing these and on different Foundations, have...</i>

Whether or not a deficit is monetized is often thought to have important macroeconomic ramifications. This paper is organized around two questions.The first is: Does monetization matter?, or morespecifically, For a given budget deficit, do nominal or real variables behave differently depending...

This paper studies strategic decision making by a private currency ledger operator, which faces competition from public money and/or other ledgers. A monopoly ledger operator can incentivize contract enforcement across the financial sector by threatening exclusion, but it can also impose markups...

Permissionless blockchains were constructed with a view to being sustainably secure. At the heart of blockchain consensus mechanisms was an explicit cost (whether it be work or stake) for participation in the network and the opportunity to propose blocks that would be added to the blockchain. A...

We analyze the offering, asking, and granting of help or other benefits as a three-stage game with bilateral private information between a person in need of help and a potential help-giver. Asking entails the risk of rejection, which can be painful: since unawareness of the need can no longer be...

This article explores subjects in optimal income taxation characterized by recent research interest, practical importance in light of concerns about inequality, potential for misunderstanding, and prospects for advancement. Throughout, the analysis highlights paths for further investigation....

We study how beliefs about firm value respond to public information stemming from either public announcements or shareholder meetings. We focus on settings with homogeneous shareholders (i.e., agents with common preferences and opinions), where information is about which course of action is best...

We study a sequential experimentation model with endogenous feedback. Agents choose between a safe and risky action, the latter generating stochastic rewards. When making this choice, each agent is selfishly motivated (myopic). However, agents can disclose their experiences to a public record,...