Different conclusions about the effects of open market operations are reached even among economists using full employment and rational expectations models. I show that these can be attributed to different assumptions regarding (i) the concept of the deficit that is held fixed in the face of an open market operation, (ii) diversity among agents, and (iii) the features generating money demand. With regard to (iii), I argue that plausible ways of explaining the holding of low-return money preclude the kind of perfect credit markets needed to obtain Ricardian equivalence.

This paper was presented for the International Seminar in Public Economics, held in February 1984 at the University of California at Santa Cruz.

We construct a model where capital competes with fiat money as a medium of exchange, and we establish conditions on fundamentals under which fiat money can be both valued and socially beneficial. When the socially efficient stock of capital is too low to provide the liquidity agents need, they overaccumulate productive assets to use as media of exchange. When this is the case, there exists a monetary equilibrium that dominates the nonmonetary one in terms of welfare. Under the Friedman Rule, fiat money provides just enough liquidity so that agents choose to accumulate the same capital stock a social planner would.