The objective of this note is to analyze some implications of the model of commodity money described in Banerjee and Maskin (1996) which may seem paradoxical. In order to do this, we incorporate a general production cost structure into the model. We focus on two different results. First, the...

Models of the exchange process based on search theory can be used to analyze the features of objects that make them more or less likely to emerge as ``money'' in equilibrium. These models illustrate the trade--off between endogenous acceptability (an equilibrium property) and intrinsic...

This paper provides a search theoretical model that captures two phenomena that have characterized several episodes of monetary history: currency shortages and the circulation of privately issued notes. As usual in these models, the media of exchange are determined as part of the equilibrium. We...

This paper generalizes the original random matching model of money by Kiyotaki and Wright (1989) (KW) in two aspects: first, the economy is characterized by an arbitrary distribution of agents who specialize in producing a particular consumption good; and second, these agents have preferences...