This dissertation provides theoretical underpinnings for exogenous matching frameworks. The ultimate goal is to improve our understanding of economies whose functioning is impaired by frictions of spatial, informational or institutional nature. Indeed, there is a well established research...

Models of monetary economies with explicit micro-foundations play a central role in macroeconomics. A common assumption is the quasi-linearity of individuals' preferences. Moreover, anonymity rules out credit and implies that individuals are constrained in their ability to save and borrow. These...

This thesis includes three essays that examine issues on two different topics: (1) trading behavior in financial markets, and (2) economic growth. In Essay 1, we report the results of an experiment designed to study the role of speculation in the formation of bubbles and crashes in laboratory...

This thesis includes three essays analyzing the role of government interventions in anchoring inflation in an extremely open small economy, Taiwan, whose monetary authority has been frequently using large-size interventions since the 1985 Plaza Agreement. Taiwan's relative success in controlling...

The purpose of this thesis, as implied by its title, is essentially two-fold. The first goal is to introduce and study the notion of properness, as well as some other concepts related to it. The importance of this property lies in the fact that in the infinite-dimensional case it effectively...

The second welfare theorem and the core-equivalence theorem have been proved to be fundamental tools for obtaining equilibrium existence theorems, especially in an infinite dimensional setting. For well-behaved exchange economies that we call proper economies, this paper gives (minimal)...

This thesis includes three essays analyzing the role of fiat money in decentralized trade. Essay 1 develops a model that describes a two-country-two-currency economy, in which prices are endogenized by using the "split-the-surplus" rule. The government generates seignorage revenue by issuing...

This thesis consists of three essays. The first two essays employ monetary search theoretic models to examine issues related to money and specialization and bilateral exchange rate determination, respectively. The third essay, which is empirical in nature, investigates fundamental determinants...

In Chapter 1 we construct a monetary economy with heterogeneity in discounting and consumption risk. Agents can insure against this risk with money and nominal government bonds, but all trades must be monetary. We demonstrate that a deflationary policy à la Friedman cannot sustain the...

This thesis includes three essays on monetary theory analyzing monetized trading arrangements in three separate environments: (1) transient economy, (2) economy with two competing imperfect record-keeping technologies, and (3) economy where agents are subject to productivity shocks. In Essay...