There has been much discussion about eliminating the 'zero lower bound' by eliminating paper currency. But such a radical and difficult approach as eliminating paper currency is not necessary. Much as during the Great Depression-when countries were able to revive their economies by going off the...

The experience of the Great Recession and its aftermath revealed that a lower bound on interestrates can be a serious obstacle for fighting recessions. However, the zero lower bound is not a law of nature;it is a policy choice. The central message of this paper is that with readily available...

We argue that the U.S. personal saving rate's long stability (from the 1960s through the early 1980s), subsequent steady decline (1980s-2007), and recent substantial increase (2008-2011) can all be interpreted using a parsimonious ‘buffer stock' model of optimal consumption in the presence of...