Research Database

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.

This paper comments on "The Real Bills Doctrine vs. the Quantity-Theory: a Reconsideration" by T. Sargent and N. Wallace. It argues that there exists a class of models similar to theirs that is (a) favorable to the quantity theory view of price stability, (b) supports the imposition of 100 percent reserve requirements, and (c) explains a long history of legal credit restrictions. In particular, lending restrictions stabilize price levels and result in Pareto improvements.

This paper considers a view commonly associated with the "quantity theory of money": that banks should face 100 percent reserve requirements. It argues first that the objectives of the quantity theorists' proposals were more than merely price level stability, and that in fact, price level stability was at most a secondary objective of their proposals. Second, it argues that these theorists had a world with distortions in mind with respect to their proposals. These are present in a special setting examined that (a) supports the imposition of 100 percent reserve requirements (on the basis of an unconstrained Pareto criterion), and (b) supports the view that these restrictions stabilize the price level and make its movements more "predictable."