I develop a simple general equilibrium model that integrates fed watching with central bank opaqueness. With the intergenerational conflict, opaqueness can solve a Ramsey problem. With monetary uncertainty as the only source of randomness, transparency is the welfare maximizing policy. With...

In this paper, we argue that the observed difference in the cost of intraday and overnight liquidity is part of an optimal payments system design. In our environment, the interest charged on overnight liquidity affects output, while the cost of intraday liquidity only affects the distribution of...

Historically, countries have relied on seigniorage. In this paper, we explore a set of features in which a benevolent government will rely on seigniorage. We use a simple overlapping generations model with return-dominated money. Money is valued because of a reserve requirement. The government...

Presentation to the "The Future of the Federal Reserve", Center for Economic Policy Studies (CEPS), Princeton University, Princeton , N.J., April 02, 2005

Corporate governance practices differ greatly in the United States and Germany. This paper describes the main institutional features of the German corporate governance system, focusing on universal banks and codetermination. The paper also summarizes existing empirical evidence that has...

This paper presents the results of a survey of monetary authorities with respect to foreign exchange intervention. The survey offers evidence on new issues that would otherwise be difficult to investigate, such as response times, non-foreign exchange factors in intervention and profitability....

We model competition in local deposit markets between for-profit and not-for-profit financial institutions. For-profit retail banks may offer a superior bundle of financial services, but not-for-profit (occupational) credit unions enjoy sponsor subsidies that allow them to capture a share of the...

This paper characterizes the temporal pattern of trading rule returns and official intervention for Australian, German, Swiss and U.S. data to investigate whether intervention generates technical trading rule profits. High frequency data show that abnormally high trading rule returns precede...

Presentation at the Philadelphia Fed Policy Forum, Philadelphia - Nov. 30, 2001