A random matching model with money is used to study the nominal yield on small denomination, bearer, safe, discount securities issued by the government. There is always one steady state with matured securities circulating at par and, for some parameters, another with them circulating at a discount. In the former, a necessary and sufficient condition for a positive nominal yield on not-yet-matured securities is exogenous discriminatory treatment of them by the government. In the latter, the post-maturity discount on securities induces a deeper pre-maturity discount even without such discriminatory treatment.

We prove the general existence of steady states with positive consumption in an N goods and fiat money version of the Kiyotaki-Wright (“On money as a median of exchange,” Journal of Political Economy 1989, 97 (4), 927–54) model by admitting mixed strategies. We also show that there always exists a steady state in which everyone accepts a least costly-to-store object. In particular, if fiat money is one such object, then there always exists a monetary steady state. We also establish some other properties of steady states and comment on the relationship between steady states and (incentive) feasible allocations.

An interpretation of government policy regarding what it accepts in transactions is embedded in a version of the Kiyotaki-Wright model of media of exchange. In an example with two goods and one fiat money, the policies consistent with fiat money being the unique medium of exchange are identified. These uniqueness policies have the government favoring fiat money in its transactions. Benefits and costs accompany any such policy. The benefit is that a worse nonmonetary equilibrium is eliminated; the cost is that a better monetary equilibrium is also eliminated.

This note presents a model whose competitive equilibrium can be consistent with the observation that current labor market conditions affect the well-being of new entrants more than they do that of senior workers. The model uses the notion that new entrants are not around soon enough to participate in risk-sharing contingent on the shocks that determine the equilibrium marginal products of first-period employment. This timing notion is formalized using a stochastic overlapping generations model.

A version of this paper was presented at the Econometric Society Summer Meeting, Cornell University, June 16-19, 1982.