This paper examines the influence of fashion on wealth accumulation in an economy with two groups of agents. Fashion is modelled as an externality generated by a particular dependence of individual agents' time preference on the two groups' per-capita consumption habits. It is shown that fashion...

In this paper I examine how the socially optimal allocation, and specialization in particular, depends on the extent of the market. I interpret the society’s ability to keep transaction records as the extent of the market and measure it by a probability <InlineEquation ID="Equ1"> <EquationSource Format="TEX">$\rho \in (0,1)$</EquationSource> </InlineEquation> with which the...</equationsource></inlineequation>

We introduce heterogeneous preferences into a tractable model of monetary search to generate price dispersion, and then examine the effects of money growth on price dispersion and welfare. With buyers’ search intensity fixed, we find that money growth increases the range of (real) prices and...

This paper examines the relationship between specialization and the use of money in two versions of the search-theoretic monetary model. The first version establishes a surprising result that specialization is more likely to occur in a barter economy than in a monetary economy. The result is...

We extend the analysis of Kiyotaki and Wright, who study economies where the commodities that serve as media of exchange (or, commodity money) are determined endogenously. Kiyotaki and Wright consider only steady-state, pure-strategy equilibria; here we allow dynamic and mixed-strategy...

Dynamic general equilibrium models that include explicit household production sectors provide a useful framework within which to analyze a variety of macroeconomic issues. However, some implications of these models depend critically on parameters, including the elasticity of substitution between...

The simple search-theoretic model of fiat money has three symmetric Nash equilibria: all agents accept money with probability 1; all agents accept money with probability 0; and all agents accept money with probability y in (0,1). Here I construct an asymmetric pure strategy equilibrium,...

We analyze economies with indivisible commodities. There are two reasons for doing so. First, we extend and provide some new insights into sunspot equilibrium theory. Finite competitive economies with perfect markets and convex consumption sets do not allow sunspot equilibria; these same...

Simple search models have equilibria where some agents accept money and others do not. We argue such equilibria should not be taken seriously. This is unfortunate if one wants a model with partial acceptability. We introduce heterogeneous agents and show partial acceptability arises naturally...