Banking, Liquidity Effects, And Monetary Policy

We study liquidity effects and monetary policy in a model with fully flexible prices and explicit roles for money and financial intermediation. Banks hold some fractions of deposits and money injections as liquidity buffers. The higher the fraction kept as reserves, the less liquid the money is. Unexpected money injections raise output and lower nominal interest rates if and only if the newly injected money is more liquid than the initial money stocks. If banks hold no liquidity buffers, liquidity effects are eliminated. In an extended model with temporary shocks, we show that failure to withdraw state-contingent money injections does not make the stabilization policy neutral, though the economy may undergo higher short-run fluctuations than otherwise. Under this circumstance, the success of stabilization policy relies on unexpected money injections being more liquid than the initial money stock.