Monetary, Fiscal, and Reserve Requirement Policy in a Simple Monetary Growth Model

The authors consider an otherwise conventional monetary growth model in which spatial separation and limited communication create a transactions role for currency, and stochastic relocation gives rise to financial intermediaries. In this framework they consider how changes in fiscal and monetary policy, and in reserve requirements, affect inflation, capital formation, and nominal interest rates. There is also considerable scope for multiple equilibria; the authors show how reserve requirements that never bind along actual equilibrium paths can play an important role in avoiding undesirable equilibria. Finally, they demonstrate that changes in (apparently) nonbinding reserve requirements can have significant, real effects. Coauthors are Mark G. Guzman, Elisabeth Huybens, and Bruce D. Smith. Copyright 1997 by Economics Department of the University of Pennsylvania and the Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association.