BIS Working Papers

No 734
Payments, credit and
asset prices
by Monika Piazzesi and Martin Schneider

Monetary and Economic Department

July 2018

JEL classification: E00, E13, E41, E42, E43, E44, E51, E52,
E58, G1, G12, G21

Keywords: Payments, monetary policy, liquidity trap,

liquidity, asset prices, collateral premium, leverage,
leverage costs, convenience yield, banking,
scarce reserves, abundant reserves
BIS Working Papers are written by members of the Monetary and Economic
Department of the Bank for International Settlements, and from time to time by other
economists, and are published by the Bank. The papers are on subjects of topical
interest and are technical in character. The views expressed in them are those of their
authors and not necessarily the views of the BIS.

This publication is available on the BIS website (www.bis.org).

© Bank for International Settlements 2018. All rights reserved. Brief excerpts may be
reproduced or translated provided the source is stated.

ISSN 1020-0959 (print)

ISSN 1682-7678 (online)
Foreword

The 16th BIS Annual Conference took place in Lucerne, Switzerland, on 23 June 2017.
The event brought together a distinguished group of central bank Governors, leading
academics and former public officials to exchange views on the topic “Long for long
or turning point?”. The papers presented at the conference and the discussants’
comments are released as BIS Working Papers.
BIS Papers no 98 contains the opening address by Jaime Caruana (Former General
Manager, BIS) and remarks by Alan Blinder (Princeton University) and Philip Lowe
(Reserve Bank of Australia).

WP734 Payments, credit and asset prices iii

 Payments, Credit and Asset Prices∗
Monika Piazzesi Martin Schneider
Stanford & NBER Stanford & NBER

Abstract

This paper studies a modern monetary economy: trade in both goods and securities relies on
money provided by intermediaries. While money is valued for its liquidity, its creation requires
costly leverage. Inflation, security prices and the transmission of monetary policy then depend
on the institutional details of the payment system. The price of a security is higher if it helps
back inside money, and lower if more inside money is used to trade it. Inflation can be low
in security market busts if bank portfolios suffer, but also in booms if trading absorbs more
money. The government has multiple policy tools: in addition to the return on outside money,
it affects the mix of securities used to back inside money.

∗
Email addresses: [email protected], [email protected]. We thank Fernando Alvarez, Gadi Barlevy, Saki
Bigio, Gila Bronshtein, Markus Brunnermeier (discussant), V.V. Chari, Pierre Collin-Dufresne (discussant), Veronica
Guerrieri, Todd Keiser (discussant), Moritz Lenel, Guido Lorenzoni, Robert Lucas, Luigi Paciello (discussant),
Cecilia Parlatore (discussant), Vincenzo Quadrini (discussant), Nancy Stokey, Rob Townsend, Harald Uhlig, Alonso
Villacorta, Randy Wright, and seminar participants at Banca d’Italia, Berkeley, Chicago, the Chicago Fed, Columbia,
ECB, Federal Reserve Board, Lausanne, Minnesota, MIT Sloan, NYU, the Philadelphia Fed, Princeton, UC Irvine,
UCL, Wisconsin and various conferences for helpful comments and suggestions.

1
1 Introduction
In modern economies, transactions occur in two layers. In the end user layer, nonbanks – house-
holds, firms and institutional investors – pay for goods and securities with inside money, that is,
payment instruments supplied by banks.1 End users’ payment instructions to banks in turn gen-
erate interbank transactions in the bank layer.2 Interbank payments are often made with reserves
– outside money – via central banks’ real time gross settlement systems, but may also be handled
through short-term credit including interbank netting arrangements.
Models of monetary policy typically abstract from these institutional features. While the New
Keynesian approach minimizes the transactions role for money altogether, even models of money as
a medium of exchange tend to focus on a single layer of transactions in which money is used to pay
for goods. As a result, financial structure does not matter for securities prices, inflation, and the
transmission of monetary policy. Moreover, policy is usually simple: it chooses either the supply of
money or the interest-rate spread between money and other nominal assets. Real securities prices
are typically determined as risk-adjusted present values, as in frictionless nonmonetary models.
This paper models the determination of securities prices and inflation in an economy with a
layered payment system that supports trade in both goods and securities. In both the bank and
end user layers, money is valued for its liquidity services, but its creation requires costly leverage.
What happens in securities markets then matters for both the supply and the demand of inside
money: securities are held by banks to back inside money, which is in turn used by other investors
to pay for securities. As a result, securities prices, inflation, and policy transmission depend on the
institutional details of the payment system.
In our model, the real value of a security is higher (and its rate of return lower) if it is held
by banks or institutional investors who borrow from banks – in both cases the security is valued
as collateral that backs inside money. At the same time, the real value of a security is lower (and
its rate of return higher) if it is held by institutional investors who rely on inside money to trade
it. Inflation is also subject to opposing money supply and demand effects: it falls if securities held
by banks or their borrowers decrease in value, say due to an uncertainty shock, because a loss of
collateral makes it more costly for banks to supply inside money. Inflation rises if securities that
require money to trade fall in value, since lower money demand for securities trading effectively
increases velocity in the goods market.
Our model summarizes the role of a layered payment system by two key aggregate bank balance
sheet ratios. The collateral ratio equals risk-weighted assets divided by debt, or the inverse of
leverage. It is chosen by banks to equate end users’ liquidity benefit of extra inside money to
banks’ cost of issuing extra debt – a banking version of the tradeoff theory of capital structure. The
liquidity ratio equals reserves divided by inside money, or the inverse of the money multiplier. It is
1
Payment instruments include not only short-term demandable assets such as deposits and money-market fund
shares, but also credit lines that can be drawn on demand such as credit cards. Credit lines also pay a key role in
payment for securities. For example, institutional investors have sweep arrangements with their custodian banks.
Participants in the triparty repo market obtain intraday credit from clearing banks.
2
Perhaps the most obvious example are direct payments out of bank deposit accounts by check or wire transfer:
payments between customers of different banks generate interbank transfers of funds. In many securities markets,
transactions are cleared by specialized financial market utilities such as clearinghouses that provide some netting of
transactions. Institutional investors then settle netted positions with those utilities through payment instructions to
their banks.

2
chosen by banks to equate the liquidity benefit of extra reserves to the spread between the interest
rate on short safe bonds and the reserve rate.
Our model distinguishes two regimes for liquidity management. Reserves are scarce if the
liquidity ratio is small relative to the scale of liquidity shocks faced by the typical bank. There
is then an active interbank market: in the event of large liquidity shocks, banks borrow overnight
from other banks. Reserves are valued for their liquidity and the spread between the short rate and
the reserve rate is positive. In contrast, reserves are abundant if the liquidity ratio is sufficiently
high; the spread shrinks to zero and the interbank market shuts down.
The abundant reserves regime of our model thus describes spreads, bank balance sheets and
interbank credit in the “liquidity trap” that many countries have entered in the wake of recent
crises. A key difference to other liquidity trap models is that the cost of liquidity is zero only in the
bank layer, where it is measured by the spread between short bonds and reserves. In the end user
layer, the cost of liquidity is measured by the spread between deposits and assets directly held by
households.3 It is positive even in a liquidity trap since bank leverage remains costly.
Another key feature is that an economy can reach a liquidity trap not only because of expansion-
ary monetary policy, but also because of a negative shock to the payoffs on securities that banks use
to back inside money, for example claims on housing. Indeed, a shock that lowers expected payoffs
or increases uncertainty about payoffs makes the production of inside money more costly and drives
banks to rely relatively more on reserves in order to back inside money. A layered payment system
can thus reach a liquidity trap without large inflation, even if there is no large injection of reserves
and prices are flexible.
The determination of collateral and liquidity ratios in general equilibrium reflects two key prin-
ciples. First, when banks have lower collateral ratios, they demand more reserves for precautionary
reasons. The reason is that banks with lower collateral ratios face higher borrowing costs in the
interbank market and therefore choose to hold more reserves as a buffer against large liquidity
shocks. The equilibrium collateral and liquidity ratios must therefore lie on a liquidity-management
curve that slopes down as long as reserves are scarce. Second, since reserves are also collateral, the
balance sheet implies the ratios must always lie on an upward sloping capital-structure curve.
The two curves illustrate the two distinct policy tools available to the government if it wants to,
say, tighten the stance of monetary policy. First, a higher real return on reserves – implemented
either by paying more interest on reserves as the Fed has done in recent years or by targeting a
lower inflation rate – only shifts the liquidity management curve up. If it is cheaper to back inside
money with reserves, banks choose to increase both their liquidity ratio and their overall collateral
ratio. Second, an open market sale of securites for reserves changes the collateral mix available to
banks, which only shifts the capital structure curve up. With more securities available as collateral,
banks increase their collateral ratio while reducing their liquidity ratio.
While both moves towards tighter policy increase the real short rate, lower bank leverage and are
qualitatively deflationary, they differ in their effects on bank liquidity and inflation.4 Indeed, while
3
In our model, household choose not to hold any short bonds: banks, who value bonds as collateral, bid up the
bond price so the low rate of return makes bonds unattractive for households. Equilibrium thus features endogenous
market segementation: while bonds are priced by intermediaries, other assets such as bank equity are priced by
households.
4
In contrast to many other models of monetary policy, the stance of policy in our model cannot be summarized
by one interest rate (or the growth rate of reserves). Instead, it must be described by two variables that take into

3
a higher real return on reserves induces banks to rely more on reserves to back inside money, an
open market sale implies more reliance on bonds and hence a lower liquidity ratio. The mechanism
by which tightening lowers inflation is therefore also different. With higher interest on reserves,
inflation declines because banks shrink the money multiplier, the inverse of the liquidity ratio. In
contrast, an open market sale leads to a higher money multiplier which partly offsets the deflationary
impact of lower reserves.
The magnitude of the inflation response to either policy move depends further on details of the
payment system. In particular, a higher reserve rate lowers inflation by less if banks hold more assets
with nominally rigid payoffs, such as long-term debt that is not adjusted in response to short-term
policy changes. Indeed, as banks increase their liquidity ratio and lower the money multiplier, the
resulting deflationary pressure raises the value of nominally rigid collateral. As banks move along
a steeper capital structure curve, the adjustment in the money multiplier is smaller and the overall
inflation response is dampened.5
Details of the payment system also matter for thinking about open market sales. Consider the
concrete example of the Fed selling the massive portfolio of government bonds and other securities
assembled through its quantitative easing programs. As more collateral sold by the Fed becomes
available to banks and reserves are withdrawn, reserves should eventually become scarce, as they
did when the Bank of Canada “unwound” its portfolio shortly after the financial crisis. Our model
shows that the point at which this happens depends on the quality of other bank collateral as well
as the netting arrangements banks set up to handle liquidity shocks. Knowing the threshold to
scarcity is crucial for assessing the consequences for interest rates and inflation.
Our model assumes that markets are competitive and all prices are perfectly flexible. Banks
and other financial firms maximize shareholder value and operate under constant returns to scale.
Moreover, they do not face adjustment costs to equity. The effects we highlight thus do not follow
from a scarcity of bank capital. We think of our model as one of large banks that provide payment
services in a world where credit markets are highly securitized. This perspective also motivates our
leading example for a shock: a change in uncertainty that moves asset premia.
Financial frictions are formally introduced as follows. First, nominal payment instruments and
reserves relax liquidity constraints in the end user and bank layer, respectively. In this sense, those
assets are more liquid than other assets. By assuming generalized cash-in-advance constraints for
households and institutional investors, we abstract from effects of interest rates on the volume of
transactions in units of goods and securities, respectively. While adding such effects is conceptually
straightforward, say by assuming a utility function over goods and money with curvature in both
arguments, our goal here is to provide a tractable setup that zeros in on novel effects for the demand
and supply for inside money.
Second, banks and the government face an upward-sloping marginal cost of making commit-
account both the role of the real return on reserves as well as the collateral mix. Within a particular model, there
are tight relationships between prices and quantities so many pairs of variables “work”. For example, in an abundant
reserves regime, we could use jointly the reserve rate and growth rate of nominal government liabilities, or the reserve
rate and the interest rate on deposits. The key point is that the reserve rate alone is not sufficient to understand the
transmission of policy.
5
Our model also lends itself to the analysis of negative interest rates on reserves. Since there is no currency –
all payments must be made with inside money – negative interest on reserves works like a tax on banks. By the
mechanism just described, a move to negative interest on reserves will do little to produce inflation if the banking
system has a lot of nominally rigid assets.

4
ments. For a bank, this “leverage cost” is smaller the larger and safer is its asset portfolio relative
to its debt. It can have either an ex post or an ex ante interpretation. For example, if more lev-
ered banks are more likely to renege on certain promises, more labor may be required to ex post
renegotiate those promises so that less labor is available for producing goods. Alternatively, more
levered banks may have to exert more effort ex ante to produce costly signals of their credibility.
For the government, we assume that leverage cost increases with the ratio of debt to consumption.
It could be motivated by output losses from distortionary taxation.
An optimal payment system in our model minimizes the total cost of leverage – government
plus banks – required to support the volume of transactions. Whether it is better to adopt a
scarce or abundant reserves regime then depends on the relative leverage costs of banks versus the
government. If the government can borrow more cheaply than banks, then it makes sense to move
to abundant reserves, as several central banks have done recently. An extreme version would be
narrow banking. In contrast, if government debt is costly, then it is beneficial to have banks rely
more on collateral other than government debt or reserves. Since the optimal system depends on
the quality of collateral, it may also make sense to switch between regimes over time in response to
asset market events.
Our analysis below starts with a baseline model without aggregate uncertainty in which end
users’ demand for inside money and the supply of securities available as bank collateral do not
respond to changes in the cost of liquidity. This model is already sufficient to show how a layered
payment system changes the transmission of policy. We then add uncertainty about asset payoffs
as well as two other additional type of institutional investors whose demand for loans or payment
instruments is interest elastic.
We first consider carry traders who hold real assets and borrow against those assets using short-
term credit supplied by banks. Carry traders have no demand for payment instruments, but supply
collateral to banks in the form of short-term loans. An example are asset-management firms who
finance securities holdings with repurchase agreements with banks (or other payment intermediaries
like money market funds) via the triparty repo market. Carry traders make the supply of collateral
respond to end users’ cost of liquidity: if it becomes more costly to produce deposits, banks offer
cheaper loans to carry traders to back inside money.
The new feature in an economy with carry traders is that the price level now depends on carry
traders’ demand for loans. For example, lower uncertainty increases the demand for loans and hence
the quantity of collateral for banks, which creates an inflationary force by increasing the supply
of payment instruments. An asset-price boom can thus be accompanied by inflation even if the
supply of reserves as well as the amount of goods transacted remains constant and banks hold no
uncertain securities themselves. Moreover, monetary policy that lowers the real short rate lowers
carry traders’ borrowing costs and boosts the aggregate market by allowing more leverage.
Second, we consider active traders who hold not only securities but also payment instruments,
since they must occasionally rebalance their portfolio using cash payments. An example are asset
management firms who sometimes want to exploit opportunities quickly before they can sell their
current portfolio. Active traders’ portfolio choices respond to the end user cost of liquidity – the
deposit interest rate offered by banks or the fee for credit lines banks charge: if payment instruments
are cheaper, active traders hold more of them, and the value of their transactions is higher. The
strength of their response depends importantly on how much netting takes place among active
traders though intraday credit systems.

5
 The new feature in an economy with active traders is that inflation now depends on active
traders’ demand for payment instruments. For example, lower uncertainty increases their demand
for deposits and credit lines. As more of payment instruments provided by banks are used in asset
market transactions, fewer instruments are used in goods market transactions, a deflationary force.
During an asset price boom, we may thus see low inflation even if the supply of reserves increases.
Moreover, monetary policy that lowers the real short term interest rate lowers active traders’ trading
costs and further boosts the aggregate market.
The broad questions we are interested in are the subject of a large literature. The main new
features of our model are that (i) transactions occur in layers, with payment instruments (inside
money) used exclusively in the end user layer and reserves (outside money) used exclusively in the
bank layer, (ii) end users include institutional investors, and (iii) both banks and the government
face leverage costs. Relative to earlier work, these properties change answers to policy questions as
well as asset pricing results, as explained in more detail in Section 7.
The paper is structured as follows. Section 2 presents a few facts about payments. Section 3
describes the model. Section 4 looks at the baseline model that features only households and banks.
It shows how steady state equilibria can be studied graphically and considers different monetary
policy tools. Section 6 introduces uncertainty and studies the link between the payment system and
securities markets. It also extends the model to accommodate institutional investors as a second
group of end users. Finally, Section 7 discusses the related literature.

2 Facts on payments
This section presents a number of facts that motivate our model. We combine data from the BIS
Payments Statistics, the Payments Risk Committee sponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of New
York, the Federal Reserve Board’s Flow of Funds Accounts and Call Reports, as well as publications
of individual clearinghouse companies.
Transactions in the end-user layer. Figure 1 gives an impression of payments in the two
layers in US dollars. The left-hand panel shows payments by bank customers with inside money, that
is, payment instructions to various types of intermediaries. The blue area labeled “nonfinancial”
adds up payments by cheque as well as various electronic means, notably Automated Clearinghouse
(ACH) transfers as well as payments by credit card. While the area appears small in the figure, it
does amount to several multiples of GDP. For example, in 2011, nonfinancial transactions were $71
trillion whereas GDP was $15 trillion. This is what one would expect given that there are multiple
stages of production and commerce before goods reach the consumer. Moreover, a share of trade
in physical capital including real estate is also contained in this category.
Payment for assets in U.S. markets is organized by specialized financial market utilities who
clear transactions and see them through to final settlement. A major player is the Depository
Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC). One of its subsidiaries, the National Securities Clearing
Corporation (NSCC) clears transactions on stock exchanges as well as over-the-counter trades in
stocks, mutual fund shares and municipal and corporate bonds. NSCC cleared $221 trillion worth
of such trades in 2011. In the left hand panel of Figure 1, transactions cleared by NSCC are shaded
in brown.
NSCC has a customer base (“membership”) of large financial institutions, in particular brokers
and dealers. When a buyer and a seller member agree on a trade – either in an exchange or in an

6
 Figure 1: Selected U.S. dollar transactions, quarterly at annual rates.
Inside money Reserves
NSS
FedSec
FedFunds
other settlement
1500 1500 residual
$ Trillions

$ Trillions
nonfinancial
1000 NSCC/DTCC 1000
FICC + FedSec

500 500

0 0
05 07 09 11 05 07 09 11

(a) Inside Money (b) Reserves

(a) Inside Money: “nonfinancial” = cheque and electronic payments reported by banks,
“NSCC/DTCC” = securities transactions cleared by NSCC, “FICC+FedSec” = securities trans-
actions cleared by FICC and Fedwire Securities Service. (b) Reserves: “NSS” = NSS settlement,
“FedSec” = Fedwire Securities settlement, “FedFunds” = estimate of payments for Fed Funds bor-
rowing by U.S. banks, “other settlement” = estimate of payments to financial market utilities.

over-the-counter market – the trade is reported to NSCC which then inserts itself as a counterparty
to both buyer and seller. In the short run, members thus effectively pay for assets with credit from
NSCC. To alleviate counterparty risk, members post collateral that limits their position relative to
NSCC. Over time, NSCC nets opposite trades by the same member. Periodically, members settle
net positions via payment instructions to members’ bank which then make (receive) interbank
payments to (from) DTCC. Netting implies that settlement payments amount to only a fraction of
the dollar value of cleared transactions.
Another DTCC subsidiary, the Fixed Income Clearing Corporation (FICC) offers clearing for
Treasury and agency securities. FICC payments are settled on the books of two “clearing banks”,
JP Morgan and Bank of New York Mellon. Interbank trades of Treasury and agency bonds can
alternatively be made via the Fedwire Securities system offered by the Federal Reserve System to
its member banks. The left hand panel of Figure 1 shows the sum of FICC and Fedwire Securities
trades in red. This number is high partially because every repurchase agreement involves two
separate security transactions (that is, the lender wires payment for a purchase to the borrower and
the borrower wires payments back to the lender at maturity).
Figure 1 does not provide an exhaustive list of US dollar transactions. First, it leaves out
financial market utilities handling derivatives and foreign exchange transactions. For example, the
Continuous Linked Settlement (CLS) group is a clearinghouse for foreign exchange spot and swap
transactions that handled trades worth $1,440 trillion in 2011. Netting in these markets is very
efficient so that CLS payments after netting were only $3 trillion. Second, even for goods and assets
covered, Figure 1 omits purchases made against credit from the seller that involves no payment
instruction to a third party. This type of transaction includes trade credit arrangements. In asset

7
markets, a share of bilateral repo trades between broker dealers and their clients is settled on the
books of the broker dealers. Finally, the figure also leaves out transactions made with currency.
Even given these omissions, the message from the left panel of Figure is clear: transaction
volume is large, and especially so in asset markets. The volume in asset markets also exhibits
pronounced fluctuations in the recent boom-bust episode. We also emphasize that not all of these
payment instructions are directly submitted to traditional banks. Financial market utilities that
provide netting are also important. Moreover, customers of money market mutual funds may also
pay by cheque or arrange ACH transfers. The payment instruction is then further relayed by the
money market fund to its custodian bank.
Transactions in the bank layer. The right-hand panel of Figure 1 shows transactions over
two settlement systems provided by the Federal Reserve Banks. The blue area represents interbank
payments via the National Settlement Service, which allows for multilateral netting of payments
by cheque and ACH. To a first approximation, one can think of it as the counterpart of the blue
area in the left hand panel, that is, non-securities payments after netting. All other areas in the
right panel represent interbank payments over Fedwire, the real time gross settlement system of the
Federal Reserve. Fedwire is accessed by participating banks who send reserves to each other.
The coloring of areas is designed to indicate roughly how the interbank payments were generated.
The red area represents payments for Treasury and agency securities over Fedwire Securities. Since
there is no netting involved, large securities transfers correspond to large transfers of reserves. For
the years after 2008, the brown area is an estimate of payments made over Fedwire to settle positions
with financial market utilities. The estimate includes not only NSCC and FICC, but also CHIPS, a
private large value transfer system used by about 50 large banks. CHIPS uses a netting algorithm to
simplify payments among its member banks; in 2011, it handled $440 trillion worth of transactions.
The green area in the figure represents payments for interbank credit in the Fed Funds market,
also sent over Fedwire. As for repo transactions, a relatively small amount of outstanding overnight
credit can generate a large number for annual Fedwire transfers. The transition from a regime of
scarce reserves to one with abundant reserves after the financial crisis is apparent by the drop in
Fed Funds transactions. The presence of government sponsored enterprises and Federal Home Loan
banks implies that the Fed Funds market has not dried up completely.
The red and brown areas suggest that payment instructions generated by asset trading are
responsible for a large share of interbank payments. This is true even though netting by financial
market utilities reduced the cleared transactions from the left panel to much smaller numbers. At
the same time, during times of scarce reserves, bank liquidity management via the Fed Funds market
also generates a large chunk of payments. The figure also contains a gray area which we cannot
assign to one of the payment types.

3 Model
Time is discrete, there is one good and there are no aggregate shocks. Output Y is constant.
Figure 2 shows a schematic overview of the model. There are claims to future output that are
“securitized”, in the sense that they are tradable in securities markets. Trees promise a constant
stream of goods x < Y. Nominal government debt takes the form of reserves or short bonds with
one period maturity. Below we will also consider nominal private debt, which are trees that promise
a constant nominal value X < P Y . Households receive the rest of output that is not securitized as

8
  
an endowment.
 

                                  

Households                                        Traders                                      Trees 

                              Deposits        Credit        Deposits                                          Nominal government debt 

                    Equity                                  

                      Banks                                                         Reserves 

                                                               Credit 

                                                                
Figure 2: Schematic overview of the model with goods and assets trading

Households invest in securities either directly or indirectly via banks. Banks are competitive,
issue deposits as well as equity and maximize shareholder value. The only restrictions on investment
are that households cannot directly hold reserves, and banks cannot hold bank equity or claims to
the share of output that is not securitized. The share of securitized output plays a key role in our
model, because it describes the amount of collateral that banks can potentially use to back inside
money.
Tradeoffs in the model reflect two basic principles. First, some assets provide liquidity benefits.
We capture a need for liquidity by cash-in-advance constraints in both layers of the model. In the
end-user layer, households must pay for goods with deposits.6 In the bank layer, banks face liquidity
shocks because they execute payment instructions from households. As a result, they must make
payments to each other with reserves that they hold or borrow from other banks in the interbank
market. Investment indicated in blue in Figure 2 thus receives liquidity benefits.
The second principle is that it is costly for agents to commit to make future payments, and more
so if they own fewer assets that can serve as collateral. Such “leverage costs” apply when banks issue
deposits or when the government issue debt. They use up goods and hence lower consumption. The
optimal asset structure and payment system therefore minimizes leverage costs. Moreover, banks’
receive collateral benefits on their investments.
The remainder of this section will analyze a version of the model in which payments are made
for goods purchases. Section 6 will introduce another motive for payments: asset purchases. There,
we we will introduce the institutional traders illustrated in Figure 2, competitive firms held by
households. These traders borrow from banks to finance their securities positions and use inside
money to pay for their asset trades. Moreover, Section 6 will introduce uncertainty about future
security payoffs. This extended version of the model determines how much inside money will be
spent in goods markets versus asset markets, and thereby determine goods and asset price inflation.
6
Section 3.6 introduces credit lines and shows that the model continues to work similarly. The key property of
either payment instrument is that it provides liquidity to end users and requires costly commitment on the part of
banks. Our model is about a modern economy where currency plays a negligible role in all (legal) transactions.

9
3.1 Households
Households have linear utility with discount factor β and receive an endowment Ωt every period.
h
Households enter period t with deposits Dt−1 and buy consumption Ct at the nominal price Pt
measured in units of reserves. Their liquidity constraint is
h
Pt Ct ≤ Dt−1 . (1)

A cash-in-advance approach helps us zero in on the role of endogenous inside money. It is not
difficult to extend the model so that the money demand by households is elastic, but it would make
the new mechanisms in our model less transparent. Moreover, the key conclusions of our analysis
extend to a model with curvature in the utility function.
In addition to deposits, households can invest in safe short bonds that earn an interest rate it .
Households can also buy trees, which are infinitely lived assets that provide fruit xt and trade at a
nominal price Qt . The household budget constraint is
h
1 + iD h


Pt Ct = Pt Ωt + Dt−1 t−1 − Dt (2)
h
+ (1 + it−1 ) Bt−1 − Bth + (Qt + Pt xt )θt−1
h
− Qt θth
+ dividends + government transfers.

Expenditure on goods must be financed through either (i) the sale of endowment, (ii) changes in
household asset positions in deposits, short bonds or trees, or (iii) exogenous income from dividends,
fees or government transfers, described in more detail below.7 Households cannot borrow overnight
or sell trees short, that is, we impose θh , B h , Dh ≥ 0.
We denote households’ marginal utility of wealth at date t by ωt , so the Lagrange multiplier on
the budget constraint (2) is ωt /Pt . From the household first-order conditions derived in Appendix
(A.1), the discount factor for the payoffs of real assets held by households is the marginal rate of
substitution between wealth at date t and t + 1, that is β̂t := βωt+1 /ωt . It is also convenient to
define the associated nominal discount rate iht := (1 + πt+1 )/β̂t , where πt+1 is the inflation rate
between t and t + 1.
With a binding cash-in-advance constraint, there is a wedge between the marginal utilities of
wealth and consumption, that is, ωt+1 < 1. The first-order conditions further imply
1
iht − iD
t = − 1. (3)
ωt+1
The cash-in-advance constraint thus binds as long as the end-user cost of liquidity, measured by
the spread between households’ nominal discount rate and the deposit rate, is positive. The spread
iht − iD
t is the convenience yield of holding inside money for end users.

Equation (3) illustrates a key difference between our model and the baseline cash-in-advance
model of Svensson (1985).8 In Svensson, all money is currency that earns no interest. Moreover,
7
We assume that an interest rate iD is earned on deposits regardless of whether they are used for payment. This
assumption helps simplify the algebra. More detailed modeling of the fee structure of deposit accounts is possibly
interesting but not likely to be first order for the questions we address in this paper.
8
The Svensson (1985) setup is the natural benchmark for us since we adopt the same timing: households must
choose money one period in advance. In contrast, the Lucas (1980) model assumes that households can choose money
within the period.

10
there is no bank layer, so households hold short bonds directly. The cost of liquidity is then simply
the interest rate on short bonds it . In contrast, the nominal discount rate iht in our model may be
higher than the short rate it , since households may choose not to hold short bonds in equilibrium.
Moreover, households pay with inside money which earns the endogenous interest rate iD .

3.2 Banks
Households own many competitive banks. The typical bank maximizes shareholder value
t−1
!
∞ Y
β̂τ ytb .
P
(4)
t=1 τ =0

Dividends are positive when banks distribute profits or negative when banks recapitalize. Table
1 illustrates a bank’s balance sheet at the beginning of day t. The asset side consists of reserves,
overnight lending, and trees. The liability side shows equity, overnight borrowing, and deposits.

Table 1: Bank balance sheet at beginning of day t

Assets Liabilities
Reserves Mt−1 Equity
Overnight lending Bt−1 Overnight borrowing Ft−1
Trees Qt θt−1 Deposits Dt−1

Liquidity management. The typical bank enters period t with deposits Dt−1 and reserves
Mt−1 . We want to capture the fact that customer payment instructions may lead to payments
between banks. For example, a payment made by debiting a deposit account may be credited to an
account holder at a different bank. We thus assume that a bank receives an idiosyncratic withdrawal
shock: an amount λ̃t Dt−1 must be sent to other banks, where λ̃ is iid across banks with mean zero
and cdf G. We assume that G is continuous and strictly increasing up to an upper bound λ̄ < 1.
In the cross section, some banks draw shocks λ̃t > 0 and hmust i make payments, while other
banks draw shocks λ̃t < 0 and thus receive payments. Since E λ̃t = 0, any funds that leave one
bank arrive at another bank; there is no aggregate flow into or out of the banking system. The
distribution of λ̃t depends on the structure of the banking system as well as the pattern of payment
flows among customers.9
Banks that need to make a transfer λ̃t Dt−1 > 0 can send reserves they have brought into the
period, or they can borrow reserves from other banks. The bank liquidity constraint is

λ̃t Dt−1 ≤ Mt−1 + Ft , (5)

where Ft ≥ 0 is new overnight borrowing of reserves from other banks. If the marginal cost of
overnight borrowing is larger than other sources of funding available to the bank, it is optimal to
9
The likelihood of payment shocks is the same across banks, regardless of bank size. Since the size distribution
of banks is not determinate in equilibrium below, little is lost in thinking about equally sized banks. Alternatively,
one may think about large banks consisting of small branches that cannot manage liquidity jointly but instead each
must deal with their own shocks.

11
borrow as little as necessary. Banks then choose a threshold rule: they do not borrow unless λ̃t is
so large that the withdrawal λ̃t Dt−1 exhausts their reserves.
For a bank that enters the period with reserves Mt−1 and deposits Dt−1 , the liquidity constraint
(5) implies a threshold shock
Mt−1
λt−1 := . (6)
Dt−1
We refer to λt−1 as the liquidity ratio of a bank. It is the inverse of a money multiplier that relates
the amount of inside money created to the quantity of reserves.
For a given liquidity ratio, the liquidity constraint (5) binds if the bank’s liquidity shock is
sufficiently large, that is, λ̃t > λt−1 . Reserves then provide a liquidity benefit, measured by the
multiplier on the constraint. Moreover, the bank borrows reserves overnight
!
λ̃t
Ft = λ̃t Dt−1 − Mt−1 = − 1 Mt−1 > 0. (7)
λt−1

Since liquidity shocks are bounded above by λ̄, banks can in principle choose a high enough liquidity
ratio, λt−1 > λ̄, so that they never run out of reserves. Banks who do this have a zero multiplier on
their liquidity constraint in all states next period and hence obtain no liquidity benefit from holding
reserves.
Portfolio and capital structure choice. Banks adjust their portfolio and capital structure
subject to leverage costs. They invest in reserves, overnight credit and trees while trading off returns,
collateral values and liquidity benefits. They issue deposits and adjust equity capital, either through
positive dividend payouts or negative recapitalizations ytb . Capital structure choices trade off returns,
leverage costs, and liquidity costs.
The bank budget constraint, or cash flow statement, says that net payout to shareholders must
be financed through changes in the bank’s positions in reserves, deposits, overnight credit, or trees:
Pt ytb = Mt−1 1 + iR D



t−1 − Mt − Dt−1 1 + it−1 + Dt
+ (Bt−1 − Ft−1 ) (1 + it−1 ) − (Bt − Ft ) + ((Qt + Pt xt ) θt−1 − Qt θt )
− c (κt ) (Dt + Ft ). (8)
In the second line, B ≥ 0 represents lending in overnight credit. The last line collects bank leverage
costs and credit lines that banks use to pay those costs, both discussed in detail below.
The first and second lines in (8) collect payoffs from payment instruments and other assets,
respectively. The bank receives interest iR t−1 on reserves that are held overnight, regardless of
whether those reserves were used to make payments. Similarly, the bank pays deposit interest iDt−1
on deposits issued in the previous period, regardless of whether its customers used the deposits
to make payments. Both conventions could be changed without changing the main points of the
analysis, but at the cost of more cluttered notation.
Leverage costs. If the last line in the bank budget constraint (8) was omitted, the cost of
debt would be independent of leverage. We assume instead that the commitment to make future
payments is costly. It takes resources to convince overnight lenders that debt will be repaid, as
well as to convince customers that the bank will indeed accept and execute payment instructions.
Moreover, we assume that convincing lenders and customers is cheaper if the bank owns more assets
to back the commitments, especially if those assets are safe.

12
 The cost of commitment depends on the collateral ratio
Mt + ρQt θt + Bt
κt := , (9)
Dt + Ft
where ρ is a fixed parameter strictly between 0 and 1. The collateral ratio divides weighted assets by
debt; its inverse is a measure of leverage. Banks have to purchase real resources c (κt ) (Dt + Ft )/Pt
in the goods market at date t. The cost function c is smooth, strictly decreasing and convex. We
further assume below that it slopes down sufficiently fast so that banks choose κ > 1.
Bank assets in the numerator of (9) have a collateral value: the resources needed to convince
customers about future commitments are smaller if the bank owns more assets. The weight ρ
allows a distinction between safe assets (reserves and overnight lending) and trees, which we will
later assume to be uncertain. The presence of a weight implies that leverage computed as the
inverse of the collateral ratio does not generally correspond to accounting measures of leverage.10
First-order conditions. A shareholder-value-maximizing firm compares the rates of return
on all assets and liabilities to the rate of return on equity. At the optimal policy, all assets must
earn rates of return that are smaller or equal to the rate of return on equity, with equality if the
bank holds the asset. Similarly, all liabilities must earn rates of return that are large or equal to the
return on equity, with equality if the bank indeed issues the liability. In our model, rates of return
not only reflect pecuniary returns, but also the effect of leverage costs and the liquidity constraint.
To illustrate the choice of assets, consider banks’ first order condition for short bonds and
reserves, derived in Appendix A.2:
it − c0 (κt ) ≤ iht , (10)
0
iR
t − c (κt ) + Et µ̃t+1 ≤ iht .
The nominal rate of return on equity is iht since households must hold bank equity in equilibrium.
The nominal bond return on the left-hand side of the first equation consists of a pecuniary return
it plus a collateral benefit; since c is strictly decreasing and convex, the collateral benefit is positive
and strictly decreasing in κt . Banks value bonds as collateral and hence require a lower pecuniary
return to hold bonds, but less so if their collateral ratio is already higher.
The rate of return on reserves in the second equation includes the same collateral benefit, but
also a liquidity benefit measured by the expected multiplier µ̃t+1 on the future liquidity constraint
(5). If banks hold both bonds and reserves (as will be true in equilibrium), the liquidity benefit can
induce a spread it − iRt between the bond and reserve rate, which measures the convenience yield of
holding reserves for banks. For a high enough liquidity ratio λt , however, the liquidity constraint
never binds at date t + 1. The multiplier µ̃t+1 is thus zero for sure, and we have it = iR
t .

The optimal choice of the collateral ratio follows from a bank-specific version of the tradeoff
theory of capital structure. The banks’ first-order condition for deposits is
0
iD h
t + c (κt ) − c (κt ) κt + Et µ̃t+1 λ̃t+1 ≥ it . (11)
At the optimal policy, the rate of return on deposits must be greater or equal to the rate of return
on equity. It consists of the interest rate iD , a marginal leverage cost that is decreasing in κ and a
liquidity cost, captured by the multiplier on the future liquidity constraint µ̃t+1 .
10
Since leverage costs take up real resources, we need to address how banks pay for them. The details of this
process are not essential and we choose an approach that simplifies formulas: we assume that banks do not face a
cash-in-advance constraint for leverage costs.

13
 Since deposits provide liquidity benefits to households and therefore pay a lower rate than equity,
the first dollar of deposits issued is always a “cheap” source of funding from the perspective of the
bank. As the bank issues more deposits, however, its marginal leverage cost increases. Eventually
the bank reaches an interior optimum for its leverage ratio. The difference to the standard tradeoff
theory is that the conventional tax advantage of debt is replaced by the liquidity benefit of debt for
end users. Moreover, issuing deposits may incur liquidity costs. Banks can mitigate those costs by
holding more reserves; we return to the determination of the optimal liquidity ratio below.

3.3 Government
We treat the government as a single entity that comprises the central bank and the fiscal authority.
The government issues reserves Mt , borrows Btg in the overnight market and chooses the reserve rate
iR
t . The government also makes lump-sum transfers to households so that its budget constraint is
satisfied every period. Below we further consider particular policies that target endogenous variables
such as the overnight interest rate. Such policies are still implemented using the basic tools Mt , Btg
and iR t . It is convenient to parametrize government policy by its two monetary policy tools Mt and
iR
t as well as the ratio of bonds to reserves bt = Btg /Mt . The growth rate of reserves is gt .
Just like financial firms, the government incurs a cost of issuing debt, above and beyond the
pecuniary cost. The government differs from firms in that it has the power to tax and hence
the (implicit) collateral that is available to it. We define the government’s collateral ratio as
κgt = Pt Ct /Mt (1 + bt ) and denote the date t government leverage cost as cg (κgt )Mt (1 + bt ) where
cg is strictly decreasing and convex, as is the bank leverage cost function c. The more real debt
Mt (1 + bt ) /Pt the government issues relative to consumption, the more resources it must spend to
convince lenders that it will repay.

3.4 Equilibrium
An equilibrium consists of interest rates iht , it and iD
t , a tree price, a nominal price level as well
as consumption, leverage cost, household portfolios and bank balance sheets such that markets
clear at the optimal choices of banks and households, taking into account government policy. Tree
market clearing requires that banks or households hold all trees. The overnight credit market clears
if borrowing by banks plus government borrowing equals aggregate bank lending. Banks must hold
all reserves.
The goods market clears if households consume the endowment and all fruit from trees, net of
any resources spent by banks and the government as leverage costs. Since output is exogenous,
only the use of goods for consumption or leverage cost is determined in equilibrium. For example,
if banks and the government are more levered, then consumption must be lower.
We focus on equilibria in which inside money has a positive liquidity benefit. They arise if
inside money is “scarce” because it is costly to produce. Scarcity of inside money has important
implications for asset prices and portfolio allocations, summarized by

Proposition 1 (Implications of scarce inside money). In any equilibrium with iht − iD

t > 0,

(i) all cash-in-advance constraints bind and together imply the quantity equation

Pt Ct = Dt−1 , (12)

14
(ii) all bonds and trees are held by banks,
(iii) rates of return are ordered by
Qt+1 + Pt+1 x
iR
t ≤ it < − 1 < iht ,
Qt

(iv) all banks choose the same collateral and liquidity ratios.
(v) There are two possible regimes for liquidity management: if reserves are abundant, λt−1 ≥ λ̄, no
bank borrows overnight; if reserves are scarce, λt−1 < λ̄, interbank credit is
Z λ̄
Ft    
= λ̃ − λt−1 dG λ̃ := f (λt−1 ) . (13)
Dt λt−1

The spread it − iR
t is positive if λt−1 < λ̄ and zero otherwise.

(vi) Consumption is Ct = Yt / (1 + ` (λt−1 , λt , κt , gt )) , where the leverage cost as a share of con-

sumption is defined as
−1

` (λt−1 , λt , κt , gt ) := cg λ−1t (1 + bt ) λt (1 + bt ) (14)
 
λt
+ c (κt ) 1 + f (λt−1 ) .
λt−1 (1 + gt )

The proof is in Appendix A.3; we now provide some intuition for each property.
Quantity theory. The nominal price level is given by the quantity equation (12), as in a
standard cash-in-advance model. The only difference is that the relevant quantity of money is the
(endogenous) supply of inside money, and the relevant opportunity cost of money is not simply
the nominal interest rate, but the convenience yield iht − iD
t . Nevertheless the argument for the
convenience yield is standard: with a positive cost of liquidity, the condition (3) implies that
households hold as few deposits as possible and the cash-in-advance constraint binds.
Asset valuation Property (ii) describes the valuation of securities held by banks. First, a
positive convenience yield of inside money for end-users requires a nominal rate of return on reserves
iR h
t below banks’ nominal return on equity it (that is, their cost of capital). If instead the reserve
h
rate were equal to it , then banks could achieve any collateral ratio by issuing equity and holding
reserves. In such an economy, money would not be scarce and cash-in-advance constraints would
not bind. We focus here on the empirically relevant case where the rate of return on equity exceeds
the return on money. Since holding reserves is costly, banks hold a finite (real) quantity of reserves
in equilibrium.
A key feature of our model is that asset valuation interacts with the payment system. This
is a permanent effect on real asset prices: the collateral benefit of assets to banks in their first-
order condition (10) also holds in steady state and introduces a permanent spread between the
rate of return on assets held by banks and assets held directly by households. The magnitude
of the collateral benefit depends on the health of the banking system measured by κ. It is thus
reminiscent of existing models of “intermediary asset pricing”. Next, we emphasize that it arises
from an endogenous choice to use collateral to back inside money, not from exogenous restrictions
on market participation.

15
 Market segmentation. Collateral benefits give rise to endogenous market segmentation. As
long as the quantity of collateral available to banks is finite, the collateral benefit on bonds in (10)
is strictly positive. Since households do not enjoy collateral benefits, they hold bonds if and only
if the pecuniary return it is exactly equal to the return on equity iht . In equilibrium, therefore, all
bonds must be held by banks. Households view their rates of return as too low and cannot sell
them short, hence they hold zero. Put differently, shareholders optimally decide to locate bonds
(as well as trees that are also eligible as bank collateral) within banks.
Aggregation. An individual bank’s problem is homogenous of degree one in all of its balance
sheet positions. Indeed, investment in competitive asset markets makes banks’ technology linear.
In addition, leverage costs as well as the liquidity constraint depend on balance sheet ratios. At
the optimum, therefore, balance sheet positions are indeterminate – only the ratios κt and λt are
pinned down.
Moreover, there are no adjustment costs to any balance sheet position; in particular, shareholders
can costlessly recapitalize banks at any time. It follows that banks’ choice of balance sheet ratios is
purely forward looking, as illustrated by their first-order conditions (10) and (11). Since all banks
face the same prices, they also all choose the same ratios. This feature is convenient since it means
that we do not have to keep track of a distribution of bank-level variables.
Reserve regimes. Since all banks choose the same liquidity ratio, we can define scarcity and
abundance of reserves in terms of that single ratio. The expression for interbank credit comes from
aggregating (7) across banks; it is zero if reserves are abundant. If reserves are abundant at date t,
they carry no liquidity benefit, and their collateral benefit is the same as that for bonds. By (10),
interest rates must be identical. We emphasize that λt−1 ≥ λ̄ describes a liquidity trap in the bank
layer only: while banks view bonds and reserves as perfect substitutes, we are looking at equilibria
in which households view money as more liquid than any other asset they hold.
Leverage cost. The total leverage cost incurred at date t adds up government and bank
leverage costs. These costs depend on the current bank ratios, because the costs are for creating
money to handle transactions at date t + 1. The more liquid the banking sector, the higher is the
government leverage cost as a share of consumption. The better collateralized the banking sector,
the lower is its leverage cost. When reserves are scarce, the real cost to borrow reserves overnight
depends on reserves and deposits carried over from the previous period. This is why the leverage
cost for banks also depends on λt−1 and gt .

3.5 Unanticipated shocks and comparison of steady states

To study the response of the economy to shocks, we use the aggregation result from Proposition
1 to characterize equilibrium as the solution to a system of nonlinear difference equations. It is
convenient to eliminate the price level: the variables are the interest rates iht ,it and iD
t , the inflation
rate πt , the real price of trees qt = Qt /Pt , the marginal utility of wealth ωt and the bank ratios
κt and λt . The bank liquidity ratio λt is the only endogenous state variable. The exogenous state
variables are output Yt and reserves growth gt . The derivation is contained in Appendix A.4.
In a steady state equilibrium, output, consumption and rates of return are constant. We restrict
attention to policies that imply the same constant growth rate g for the nominal quantities Mt
and Btg so the bond-reserve ratio b := Btg /Mt is constant as well. With fixed rates of return, the
marginal rate of substitution of wealth across dates is given by δ = 1/β − 1 and inflation is π = g.
The key bank ratios λ and κ are also constant but endogenously determined; they summarize the

16
role of the payment system for asset prices and the price level.
Like the baseline Svensson model, our model has limited transition dynamics, described in
Proposition 2 (Simple dynamics). For any initial condition (λ0 , Y0 , g0 ) sufficiently close to a steady
state with (λ, Y, g), there exists a one time government bond trade b0 such that the economy reaches
the steady state after one period.
The price level jumps between dates 0 and 1 by the factor
λ0 Y0 1 + ` (λ, λ, κ, g)
1 + π1 = (1 + g0 ) . (15)
λ Y 1 + ` (λ0 , λ, κ, g0 )

If reserves are abundant then b0 = b and ` (λ, λ, κ, g) = ` (λ0 , λ, κ, g0 ) for any g and g0 .

The proof is in Appendix A.5. In Svensson’s model, an unanticipated shock only generates a
one time jump in the price level from date 0 to date 1, after which the inflation rate continues at
the new steady state rate. The reason the jump does not happen right away at date 0 is that the
date 0 price level is predetermined by money holdings that agents bring into the period together
with date 0 exogenous output.
In our model, there is more scope for dynamics when reserves are scarce, because real overnight
credit depends on reserves and deposits carried over from the previous period. Since interbank
credit is a relatively small share of bank assets, we view the potential transition dynamics as a
technical feature of the model, rather than a substantively interesting one. We thus assume that an
unanticipated shock is always accompanied by a government trade b0 that neutralizes the effect and
allows immediate transition to the new steady state. The dynamics are then analogous to Svensson:
there is a one time jump in the price level after which inflation reaches its steady state rate.
In what follows, we study an economy that is initially in steady state with state (λ∗ , Y ∗ , g ∗ ) and
experiences an unanticipated shock to the environment at date 0. The shock could be a change to
future policy or asset payoffs, but it could also involve a one time injection of reserves g0 , say, or a
temporary shock to current output Y0 . We know from Proposition 2 that much of the response to
the shock is described by comparative statics of steady states, from the initial steady state to the
new steady state with (λ, Y, g) say that is reached at date 1.
For inflation, it is interesting to further distinguish the short run and long run response to the
shock. The long run response of inflation is the difference between g and g ∗ . In the short run,
between dates 0 and 1, the price level jumps by the factor (15), for λ0 = λ∗ . It is important here
that g0 can differ from both g and g ∗ if the shock involves a one time injection of reserves.

3.6 Credit lines as inside money

So far, our liquidity constraint requires households to pay with deposits. We now show that the
basic logic of the model extends to another payment instrument that is important in practice,
namely credit lines. The common denominator of both types of payment instruments is that banks
make costly commitments to households that must be backed up by bank assets. In our analysis
below, we thus apply the general term “inside money” to deposits and credit lines.
Suppose that households can pay either with deposits, or by drawing down a credit line Lht−1 :
h
Pt Ct ≤ Dt−1 + Lht−1 .

17
Credit lines must be arranged one period in advance with a bank, but require no investment – they
represent intraday credit extended by banks on demand. In exchange for the commitment to accept
payment instructions, banks charge a fee iLt−1 Lt−1 proportional to the credit amount.11
We consider equilibria such that the liquidity constraint binds and households are indifferent
between alternative payment instruments. In any such equilibrium we have

iht−1 − iD L
t−1 = it−1 > 0. (16)

Households who invest in deposits must provide funds a period in advance on which they receive
the nominal rate iD t−1 . Households who arrange a credit line can instead invest the funds in bank
equity that yield it , but must then pay the fee iLt−1 . The inequality says that inside money is costly
h

and households’ optimal choice is then to hold as little money as necessary.

On the bank side, we assume for simplicity that the same collateral is required to back a dollar
of credit line and a dollar of deposits. Moreover, the distribution of liquidity shocks is the same
per dollar of both payment instruments. Since the cost of liquidity (16) is also the same, banks are
similarly indifferent between issuing the two instruments. In particular, both issuing deposits and
issuing equity together with extending credit lines is cheaper than just issuing equity. Appendices
A.1 and A.2 formally state problems with credit lines for households and banks, respectively, and
works through the algebra.

4 Graphical analysis
To obtain simpler formulas for steady state values, and in line with our interpretation of the model
period as short, we now let the period length shrink to zero. Appendix A.6 reformulates the
model with a variable period length and characterizes the steady state in the limit. The result is
summarized by

Proposition 3. As the period length becomes short, steady state bank ratios must lie on a pair of
curves in (λ, κ)-plane, the liquidity management curve

δ − (iR − π) = −c0 (κ) + (1 − G (λ)) (c (κ) − c0 (κ) (κ − 1)) (17)

and the capital structure curve
¯
λ (1 + b) + ρ 1+`(λ,κ) x
δ+ρc0 (κ) Y
+ f (λ)
κ= (18)
1 + f (λ) ,

where `¯(λ, κ) = ` (λ, λ, κ, 0) is the total steady state leverage cost as a share of consumption.
The liquidity management curve is downward sloping for λ < λ̄ and constant for λ ≥ λ̄. The
capital structure curve is upward sloping if leverage costs are sufficiently small as a share of output.
A unique steady state with κ > 1 exists if holding reserves is sufficiently costly ( iR − π low) and
bank collateral is sufficiently scarce ( ρx small).
11
We assume that an interest rate iD is earned on deposits regardless of whether they are spent, and that the fee
L
i is paid on credit lines regardless of whether they are drawn. These assumptions help simplify the algebra. More
detailed modeling of the fee structure of different payment instruments is possibly interesting but not likely to be
first order for the questions we address in this paper.

18
 collateral ratio

liquidity ratio

Figure 3: The blue line is the liquidity management curve. The green line is the capital structure
curve. In the yellow shaded region, reserves are abundant, λ ≥ λ̄.

The interest rate on bonds, the real price of trees and the interest rate on deposits are given by
x
i = δ + π + c0 (κ) , q= , (19)
δ + ρc0 (κ)
Z λ̄  
D 0 0
i = δ + π + c (κ) − c (κ) κ + (c (κ) − c (κ) (κ − 1)) λ̃dG λ̃ . (20)
λ

The proof is in Appendix A.6. We now describe where the curves come from and then use them
for graphical analysis. Figure 3 plots both curves. It divides the (λ, κ)-plane into two regions: in
the white region with λ < λ̄, reserves are scarce, banks’ liquidity constraint sometimes bind and
there is an active interbank credit market. In the yellow shaded region with λ ≥ λ̄, reserves are
abundant, bank liquidity constraints never bind and no bank borrows overnight. Equilibrium could
in principle be in either region.
The figure can also be used to track several other variables that are simple functions of λ and
κ. From (19), the real interest rate on bonds is monotonically increasing in the collateral ratio, so
it can be read along the vertical axis. Similarly, the tree price declines in κ. Moreover, the short
run response of inflation in (15) depends importantly on the change in the money multiplier 1/λ
that can be inferred from movement along the horizontal axis.
The liquidity management curve is derived from banks’ first order condition for reserves in
(10). Banks’ opportunity cost of holding reserves on the left-hand side is equal to the sum of the
collateral benefit and the expected liquidity benefit of reserves on the right-hand side. A liquidity
benefit accrues only if there is a chance that banks’ liquidity constraint binds, that is, if λ < λ̄ and
hence G (λ) < 1.
In general equilibrium, the liquidity benefit equals the leverage cost saved by not accessing the

19
overnight credit market. The function c (κ) − c0 (κ) (κ − 1) is decreasing in κ: if banks are better
collateralized, the cost of overnight borrowing is lower. A bank that runs out of reserves must turn
to the overnight market to make payments and incurs a marginal cost of leverage c (κ) − c0 (κ) κ. At
the same time, the borrowing bank’s overnight credit serves as collateral for the lending bank. By
(19), the collateral benefit of overnight credit is −c0 (κ) and lowers the equilibrium overnight rate.
The cost of borrowing is the difference between the two terms.
Figure 3 displays the liquidity management curve as a dark blue line. Intuitively, the liquidity
management answers the question: “how much liquidity λ should banks choose if their collateral
ratio is κ”? At a lower κ, borrowing overnight is more costly, so that banks choose to hold a higher
liquidity ratio to lower the probability that they have to borrow. As a result, the curve slopes
down. Once reserves are abundant, banks never borrow overnight and the optimal collateral ratio
is a constant, determined by the opportunity cost of reserves.
Banks’ demand for money. The liquidity-management curve (17) can be viewed as a money
demand function. From the bank Euler equation (10), the collateral ratio κ moves one-for-one with
the overnight interest rate. Banks’ desired liquidity ratio λ is thus decreasing in the opportunity
cost of holding reserves i − iR as long as reserves are scarce. If leverage cost is a small share of
output, the real quantity of deposits is effectively pinned down by output Y , and banks’ real demand
for reserves λC moves largely with the liquidity ratio: it slopes down when reserves are scarce and
becomes perfectly elastic at i = iR when reserves are abundant.
We emphasize that bank demand for outside money as described by the liquidity-management
curve is quite different from the demand for inside money. In the current version of the model,
the demand for inside money is inelastic at Y . As a result, the demand for outside money does
not depend on the liquidity preference of households. Instead, it is shaped by banks’ technology
for handling payments. For example, when bank’s money demand becomes flat depends on the
maximal liquidity shock λ̄ banks can face, as opposed to say, the level of real balances at which
households are satiated.
The capital structure curve exploits the fact that the ratios are connected via bank balance
sheets: it says how large a liquidity ratio is needed to achieve a collateral ratio κ given the other
collateral banks have access to. Formally, the numerator on the right-hand side sums up the value
of bank collateral relative to deposits while the denominator does the same for debt. A simple
special case is that of narrow bank that only holds reserves and government bonds: we then have
κ = λ (1 + b), a straight line.
Two more subtle effects further contribute to an upward slope. First, banks with higher liquidity
ratios run out of reserves less often, which results in lower outstanding interbank credit f (λ) and
hence a higher collateral ratio. Since every dollar of interbank credit is both an asset and a liability
in the banking sector, a reduction in interbank credit also increases overall collateral. This effect
makes the curve steeper but is active only when reserves are scarce.
The second effect is that the collateral ratio affects the market price of trees and hence the value
of “real” collateral. Indeed, the second term in the numerator contains the ratio of the value of
trees q relative to consumption. If κ is higher, banks compete less for collateral: fruit are discounted
at a higher rate and prices are lower. The result is again a steeper slope of the curve. The effect
diminishes as κ rises since c is convex.
There is also a force that could in principle generate a downward slope. Since total steady
state leverage cost is decreasing in both κ and λ, larger κ will generate lower consumption (`¯(λ, κ)

20
increases), and hence fewer transactions. As a result, more collateral is available relative to trans-
actions, and if the effect is strong enough then less λ is needed to achieve the higher κ. However,
this effect is small if leverage costs are a small share of output. Since we view the magnitude of
leverage costs as similar to that of an interest rate spread, we are comfortable with assuming that
they are sufficiently small.
We obtain a unique steady state if inside money is sufficiently scarce. We have already seen
above that the return on reserves must be below iht for an equilibrium in which insider money is
scarce. If the difference is too small and other high quality real collateral is too readily available,
then we may not have a steady state with that property. We thus focus on economies in which
banks’ access to real collateral is sufficiently limited.

4.1 Financial structure and the payment system

This section highlights three properties of a layered payment system as studied in this paper. First,
the cost of liquidity differs across layers and policy only indirectly affects the cost of liquidity in
the bank customer layer. Second, how many reserves it takes to achieve “abundance” depends on
the organization of the banking system, in particular on interbank netting agreements. Finally,
institutional details – in particular, netting and the denomination of collateral – matter for the cost
of liquidity and the connection between asset prices and inflation.
Cost of liquidity. In many monetary models, the cost of liquidity to all agents is measured by
the spread between the short interest rate and the interest rate on money. In a liquidity trap with
i = iR , bonds and money are then perfect substitutes for all agents. In a layered payment system,
the spread i − iR only represents the cost of liquidity of banks. When reserves are abundant, bonds
and outside money are perfect substitutes for banks. However, the spread i − iR does not matter
directly to households, who do not hold reserves and do not participate in the overnight credit
market.
The cost of liquidity for end users is given by the opportunity cost of deposits (20). In general, it
depends on banks’ liquidity and collateral ratios. It reflects the spread between bonds and reserves
only to the extent banks pass on the cost of producing liquidity to their customers. For example,
when reserves become abundant, the cost of liquidity falls. However, even in that case it remains
positive: it is still true that liquidity relies on costly bank leverage, so deposits and other assets are
not perfect substitutes for households.
Interbank netting and abundance vs scarcity of reserves. How many reserves does it
take to make reserves abundant? Relatedly, if a central bank wants to reduce its balance sheet to
return to scarcity, how far does it have to go? Our model says that the answer depends crucially on
how the banking system handles liquidity shocks. One concrete way in which banks influence the
size of liquidity shocks is by participating in netting systems that economize on the use of reserves.
We now illustrate the role of how the banking system is organized by introducing netting into the
model.12
The liquidity constraint (5) assumes that all bank payments must be made with reserves. Sup-
pose that banks can also use intraday credit It to pay, but that their intraday credit position is
limited by a downpayment into the netting system that has to be made in reserves, either held
12
More generally, the changes in the industrial organization of banking can have similar effects. For example, if
banking becomes more concentrated through, say, a merger wave, we would also expect fewer interbank payments
to handle the same flow of bank customers’ transactions and hence a lower demand for reserves.

21
overnight or borrowed from other banks. We thus replace the liquidity constraint by
λ̃t Dt−1 = Mt−1 + Ft + It ,
It ≤ v (Mt−1 + Ft )
and subtract intraday credit It from the date t cash flow (8).
A bank that runs out of reserves will exhaust its intraday credit limit before tapping the overnight
market, and will continue to borrow as little as possible. We can thus combine the two constraints
into
λ̃t Dt ≤ (1 + v) (Mt + Ft+1 ) . (21)
The bank’s problem is then to maximize shareholder value subject to (21). The appendix shows
that the structure of the solution is the same as above, but with the new liquidity ratio (6) defined
as λt := (1 + v) Mt /Dt . The price level is then determined as Pt = Mt−1 (1 + v) /λt−1 Yt .
The new formula for λt links the amount of reserves required to achieve abundance (that is,
λt ≥ λ̄) to the extent of interbank netting: more efficient netting (higher v) implies that fewer
reserves are sufficient to deliver abundance. In general, the fewer interbank payments are required to
handle a given volume of end-user transactions, the fewer reserves are needed a medium of exchange
in the bank layer. At the same time, the extent of netting also affects the capital-structure curve,
an effect discussed below.
Nominal collateral, netting, interest rates and inflation. In a layered payment system,
bank balance sheets provide a link between asset prices – the value of collateral held by banks –
and the nominal price level, which is determined by banks’ issuance of inside money. In our model,
this link is represented by the slope of the capital-structure curve: it connects the collateral ratio κ
– and hence, from the bank Euler equation and the valuation of trees (19), the rates of return on
assets held by banks – to the liquidity ratio λ that drives the money multiplier and hence the price
level. We now show how financial structure – in particular the denomination of collateral and the
presence of netting – shapes this link.
To clarify the role of nominal collateral, we allow households to also issue bonds. This introduces
a second type of bonds: it is issued by households and promises a payment stream of Xt = nMt
dollars. We think of this tree as, say, nominal long term mortgages; payments grow with the supply
of reserves to ensure a constant share of nominal trees in steady state. Other than the denomination
of payments, nominal trees work exactly like the “real trees” studied so far – both enter the collateral
ratio with weight ρ. In equilibrium, nominal trees are thus held exclusively by banks, and their
nominal value is nMt / (δ + π + ρc0 (κ)) .
Allowing for netting and nominal collateral does not affect the liquidity-management curve:
banks’ choice of ratios given prices does not change. However, the appendix derives the new
capital-structure curve as
 
λ
1+v
1 + b + ρ δ+g+ρc0 (κ) + ρ 1+c̄(λ,λ,κ,g)
n
δ+ρc0 (κ) Y
x
+ f1+v
(λ)

κ= . (22)
1 + f1+v
(λ)

Comparing with our previous expression for the capital-structure curve (18), there are three differ-
ences: more efficient netting (higher γ) makes the curve flatter, whereas more nominal collateral
(higher n) makes it steeper. Moreover, since nominal trees are long term, the growth rate of nominal
liabilities now enters the equation as well.

22
 Intuitively, financial structure determines the link between collateral and liquidity ratios because
the price level feeds back to the real value of collateral on the balance sheet. Indeed, a lower money
multiplier 1/λ depresses the price level Pt = Mt−1 (1 + γ) /Yt λt−1 and thereby increases the real
value of all nominal assets. If there are nominal assets other than reserves, then this revaluation is
stronger and it takes a smaller decline in 1/λ to achieve any given increase in κ: the curve becomes
steeper. In contrast, if there is more netting then a lower money multiplier 1/λ depresses the price
level by less, the revaluation is weaker and the curve is flatter.
Importantly, what matters for revaluation is only the denomination of collateral, not the identity
of the borrower. The slope of the capital-structure curve increases both when there are more nominal
trees, which we interpret as private liabilities denominated in dollars, and when there are more
nominal government bonds (higher b). The feature that the quantity of nominal bonds matters
for the price level connects our model to the fiscal theory of the price level. However, the role of
government debt here is different: it is only one of the various assets that banks use to back inside
money, and this is what gives it a special role.

5 Monetary/fiscal policy and interest on reserves

We now study the effect of government policy on equilibrium asset prices and inflation. The
government has two distinct policy tools. First, it can set the real return on reserves rR = iR − π: it
controls the nominal rate on reserves iR , and it can change the inflation rate π via the growth rate
of nominal government liabilities. Second, the government can alter the mix of collateral available
to banks. For example, the central bank can perform open-market trades in government bonds,
thus changing the bond-reserve ratio b. It could also purchase other assets such as trees.
A key feature of our model is that the two policy tools affect asset prices and inflation in
different ways. A quick way to see this is that the real return on reserves rR affects only the
liquidity-management curve (17) but not the capital-structure curve (18), whereas the opposite
is true for the bond-reserve ratio b. We now discuss the policy tools in turn. We pay particular
attention to another key feature of the model: the magnitude of policy effects depends on financial
structure.

5.1 The real return on reserves

Changes in the real return on reserves capture two policy shifts that may at first sight appear quite
different. Before the financial crisis, most countries did not pay interest on reserves (iR = 0) and real
returns on reserves differed only because of inflation: a higher growth rate of government liabilities
increases the inflation rate and lowers the real return on reserves. More recently, many central
banks operate in an environment of abundant reserves and actively change the nominal reserve rate
iR while committing to a stable path of inflation.
Our framework emphasizes the common denominator of these two policy changes. An expan-
sionary policy lowers the real return on reserves and effectively taxes banks’ liquidity more, which
lowers banks’ overall return on assets. Banks respond by adjusting their leverage and portfolio
choice. To maintain a return δ on equity, banks increase their leverage, or lower their collateral
ratio κ. Mechanically, the liquidity-management curve shifts down, as in both panels of Figure 4,
where the shifted curve is shown as a dashed line. Since banks value collateral less, they also lower
their liquidity ratio – mechanically, we move down to a new equilibrium along the capital-structure

23
 collateral ratio

collateral ratio
liquidity ratio liquidity ratio

(a) Faster nominal growth with scarce reserves (b) Lower interest iR on reserves with abundant reserves

Figure 4: Expansionary monetary policy lowers the real reserve rate

curve. A lower real return on reserves thus reduces both ratios, λ and κ.
The magnitude of the impact of an expansionary monetary policy depends on the slope of the
capital structure curve. When the curve is steep, the liquidity ratio λ drops by less and the money
multiplier 1/λ increases by less, leading to less inflation in the short run. The curve is steeper when
banks hold more nominal collateral, or there is less efficient netting.
The policy also has a permanent effect on real asset prices – in particular the real overnight
rate and deposit rate fall, and the price of trees increases. The reason is that a higher tax on bank
assets makes deposit production more costly and banks pass the higher costs on to customers in
the form of lower deposit rates, whether reserves are abundant or not. Moreover, the higher tax
on bank assets reduces the collateral ratio, which makes collateral assets more valuable in the new
steady state. This is in contrast to many models with sticky prices or segmented markets, where
“liquidity effects” on the real interest rate are temporary phenomena. Permanent effects arise in
our model because the opportunity costs of holding reserves change the way banks produce inside
money, with effects on the cost of leverage and the value of collateral.
Negative interest rates on reserves. Our framework does not require that the nominal or
real interest rate on reserves be positive. This is due to our technological assumption that banks
rely on reserves for payment and always hold reserves in equilibrium. In particular, banks cannot
handle payments or hold collateral by converting reserves into currency. We believe this is a sensible
assumption as long as nominal rates on reserves are not too low. If the government chooses negative
rates in Figure 4, it can in principle lower interest rates so as to move all the way into the scarce
reserve region.

24
 collateral ratio

collateral ratio
liquidity ratio liquidity ratio

(a) Open market operations with scarce reserves (b) The red curve is equation (23)

Figure 5: More expansionary monetary policy and interest-rate policies

5.2 The collateral mix

The second policy tool of the government is changing the mix of collateral available to banks with
open market trades. In a traditional open market purchase, the government buys back bonds from
banks in exchange for reserves. In our framework, such a trade alters the balance sheet link between
collateral and liquidity ratios: as bonds are no longer available to back inside money, it takes more
reserves to achieve any given collateral ratio. Mechanically, the capital-structure curve shifts to the
right.
The effect of traditional open market policy on bank portfolios depends crucially on whether
reserves are scarce or abundant. With scarce reserves, banks with higher liquidity ratios have to
borrow overnight less often and therefore choose lower collateral ratios as well. We thus move to a
new equilibrium along the downward sloping portion of the liquidity-management curve, as in the
left panel of Figure 5. In contrast, when reserves are abundant the collateral ratio remains fixed
and banks absorb the additional reserves to increase the liquidity ratio λ.
More formally, consider a comparative static that increases reserves and offsets this change by
an equal change in bonds: we move from an initial equilibrium with (B0g , M0 ) to a new equilibrium
with (B̃0g , M̃0 ), where M̃0 − M0 = B0g − B̃0g > 0. As before, reserves and bonds then grow at the
same rate π throughout. For graphical analysis, this expansionary open-market operation can be
summarized by a decrease in the bond-reserve ratio from b to b̃ which shifts the capital-structure
curve to the right by (18). There is no effect on the liquidity-management curve which does not
depend on b.
If reserves are abundant in the initial equilibrium, then they must still be abundant in the new
equilibrium. As a result, the policy has no effect on the collateral ratio and asset prices. With

25
abundant reserves, both reserves and short bonds are equally valued by banks as collateral only;
there is no liquidity benefit from reserves. A trade that leaves total government liabilities M0 + B0g
unchanged must therefore be irrelevant. This result is consistent with analysis in existing monetary
models – here it is derived in a two layer system where the demand for outside money comes from
banks. We emphasize that the irrelevance result does not hold for a sufficient large open market
sale. This is because a large increase in b could move the new equilibrium into the scarce reserve
region.
What about inflation? Any open market trade that keeps reserves abundant has no effect on
the price level. This result follows from the capital structure curve (18) and the determination of
the price level (15). By construction, the policy maintains the same nominal path of government
liabilities, that is M̃0 (1 + b̃) = M0 (1 + b). The initial growth rate of reserves is therefore 1 + g0 =
(1 + b) /(1 + b̃). Moreover, banks prefer to maintain the same real value of government liabilities
– they want to keep leverage constant. In the abundant reserve region, the liquidity-management
curve is flat and f (λ) = 0 so that λ̃(1 + b̃) = λ (1 + b). From (15), the higher supply of outside
money is therefore exactly offset by a drop in the money multiplier. Constant bank leverage further
implies that asset prices do not move.
In contrast, when reserves are scarce as in Figure 5, then a purchase of bonds with reserves is
inflationary in the short run and permanently lowers the real interest rate. The short run inflation
response is subtle since the policy again both increases the quantity of outside money and lowers the
money multiplier. However, with scarce reserves, banks with higher liquidity ratios choose to reduce
the collateral ratio. Lower demand for collateral reduces the real value of government liabilities.
The money multiplier thus falls by less than the growth rate of outside money and the price level
increases in the short run.
Graphically, consider moving horizontally at the original κ to the new capital-structure curve.
Such a move would increase the liquidity ratio to keep the real value of government liabilities λ(1+b)
constant, which is what happens with abundant reserves. In the scarce reserve region, however, the
liquidity-management curve slopes down, so that the new equilibrium liquidity ratio is lower. In
particular, the percentage change in λ is now less than the change in outside money growth given
by the policy.

5.3 Interest rate policies

Many central banks conduct monetary policy by following a nominal interest rate rule. In practice,
the rule is typically implemented by open-market policy. For example, during the scarce reserves
regime in place in the U.S. until 2008, the New York Fed’s trading desk bought and sold bonds of
various maturities in exchange for reserves in order to move the overnight interest rate (the Federal
Funds rate) close to the Fed’s target. More recently, as reserves have become abundant, the Fed
Funds rate and the interest rate on reserves have been essentially the same, and the policy lever is
the reserve rate. It is then tempting to simply transfer existing analysis of interest-rate rules to the
abundant reserves environment even though the policy implementation is different.
In many monetary models, the details of how the central bank implements the interest-rate
rule are irrelevant; the nominal interest rate alone summarizes the stance of monetary policy. In
particular, many models use households’ optimal choice between currency and short-term bonds to
derive optimal real balances as a function of the nominal interest rates and consumption. At the
same time, intertemporal asset pricing equations – and possibly price setting equations – imply a

26
path for inflation. The path for the money supply can then be inferred ex post so as to generate the
implied path for real balances, but is often omitted from the analysis altogether. In particular, it
does not matter whether policy is implemented with open-market purchases or interest on reserves.
In our model, policy cannot be summarized by the nominal interest rate alone. As discussed
above, policy matters in two ways. Policy can either change the real return on reserves or the
collateral mix between reserves and government bonds, which matters as long as reserves are scarce.
Both policy actions affect the overnight nominal interest rate. We now show that, with scarce
reserves, the same nominal interest rate can be achieved with many combinations of interest on
reserves and open-market purchases that have different implications for real interest rates and
inflation. Moreover, we show that the reserve rate is not sufficient to characterize policy with
abundant reserves.
Scarce reserves. We start from an initial equilibrium in the region with scarce reserves with
some values for iR , π and b and an initial overnight rate. Holding fixed iR , we now choose a new
target overnight rate i that is below the initial overnight rate (but still above the reserve rate)
and ask how π and b can change to implement it. To proceed graphically, we combine the first-
order condition for overnight lending (10) and the liquidity-management curve (17) to trace out all
equilibrium pairs (λ, κ) that are consistent with the target spread i − iR :

i − iR = (1 − G (λ)) (c (κ) − c0 (κ) (κ − 1)) . (23)

This spread is the opportunity cost of holding reserves rather than lending overnight. It must be
equal to the liquidity benefit of reserves on the right-hand side since the collateral benefits of the
two assets are the same.
The curve in (λ, κ) plane described by equation (23) is displayed as a red line in the right panel
of Figure 5. It has four key properties. First, it is downward sloping, much like the liquidity-
management curve with scarce reserves: at a given spread, banks with higher liquidity ratios choose
lower collateral ratios since they run out of reserves less often. Second, the red curve never enters
the abundant reserves region: as reserves become more abundant, collateral must fall to maintain
a positive spread.
Third, the red curve lies above the liquidity-management curve at the initial equilibrium. This
is because the new target overnight rate and hence the new target spread are below the initial
overnight rate and spread, respectively. For the old target spread, the red line would pass through
the initial equilibrium. To lower the spread, a given liquidity ratio λ must be associated with
more collateral. Finally, we note that the red curve is independent of π and b, the two parameters
describing policy with scarce reserves.
How can the government change policy to move to the new lower overnight rate, that is, to shift
equilibrium onto the red line? The new equilibrium pair (λ, κ) must lie on the capital structure
and liquidity-management curves. The policy analysis above thus suggests two simple options.
First, the government could announce a lower growth rate of nominal liabilities π, and thereby shift
the liquidity-management curve up until all three curves intersect. Second, the government could
purchase bonds in the open market and thereby shift the capital-structure curve to the right until
all three curves intersect.
Both policies produce the same change in the overnight nominal rate. At the same time, they
have very different implications for the real interest rate and inflation. As discussed in the previous
section, lower growth of government liabilities lowers inflation and increases the real interest rate.

27
In contrast, open market purchases of bonds increase inflation and lower the real interest rate. With
open market purchases, the inflation response is short term only, so that the new lower nominal
interest target is achieved via a lower real rate. In contrast, with lower outside money growth the
higher real rate is offset by lower inflation.
In addition to the two extreme policies just sketched, many other policies are also consistent
with the new target nominal overnight rate. These policies combine open-market purchases with
lower future growth of liabilities and thereby shift both curves at once, rather than one at a time as
for the extreme policies. The only requirement on the shifts is that the new equilibrium ends up on
the curve described by equation (23). In particular, the same nominal interest rate is compatible
with an entire range of bank liquidity ratios in equilibrium.
A key difference between our model and other models of scarce outside money is that the only
medium of exchange for end users is inside money produced by banks. Outside money – here reserves
– is only one input into the production of inside money. In particular banks also use government
bonds as collateral to back inside money. As a result, the spread between the overnight rate and the
reserve rate measures the scarcity of reserves for banks; it does not measure the scarcity of inside
money in the economy as a whole. In particular, there is not a unique amount of reserves implied
by a given volume of transactions and a spread.
Abundant reserves. Can the government describe policy with an interest rate rule for i = iR
when reserves are abundant? Equilibrium is described by (10) and (18), which determine λ and κ
for a given real return on reserves. As a result, a nominal reserve rate alone cannot pin down bank
liquidity and collateral. Similarly, a feedback rule that relates the rate on reserve to inflation, for
example i = g (π), does not uniquely determine λ, κ, inflation and the real interest rate. This is
true even if we directly select a rule for the real rate as a function of π, thus eliminating possible
multiplicity coming from the shape of g that has been discussed in the literature.
Our model differs from other monetary models in what happens once outside money becomes
abundant. Consider first models with bonds and currency only. At the zero lower bound in such
models, bonds and outside money become perfect substitutes to bank customers, so the medium
of exchange (currency) loses its liquidity benefit. In our model, end users hold neither bonds nor
outside money – both are held only by banks. Equating i and iR makes bonds and outside money
perfect substitutes for banks, but does not remove the liquidity benefit of the medium of exchange,
inside money produced by banks.
There are also models in which reserves, bonds and currency coexist. In such models, i = iR > 0
makes bonds and reserves perfect substitutes. At the same time, currency remains a scarce medium
of exchange that is relevant for some transactions. The reserve rate represents the spread between
reserves and the medium of exchange; it measures the scarcity of currency and relates the demand
for real balances to real variables such as consumption. The tradeoff between currency and reserves
is what enables those models to work with interest rate rules in the usual way even when reserves
are abundant.

5.4 Optimal policy

The optimal payment system minimizes the loss of resources due to leverage. Our technological
assumptions say that a given volume of transactions T requires a fixed amount of deposits supplied
by banks. The question for society is how those deposits should be backed. The steady state
consumption loss is summarized by the leverage cost as a share of consumption `¯(λ, κ) defined

28
 collateral ratio
liquidity ratio

Figure 6: The cyan line is an indifference curve implied by equation (??).

in Proposition 3. Provided that the leverage cost of the government slopes up fast enough, the
indifference curves of this loss function are upward sloping and convex, as shown in Figure 6.
We consider the best steady state equilibrium that the government can select by choice of its
two policy instruments, the collateral mix represented by b and the real return on reserves iR − π,
which determines the opportunity costs of holding reserves. The optimal policy problem is to choose
those instruments together with λ and κ to minimize losses `¯(λ, κ) subject to the capital-structure
curve (18) and the liquidity-management curve (17).
If the government can freely choose the ratio of bonds to reserves, it is optimal to set b = 0.
Indeed, while bonds and reserves provide the same collateral services, reserves also provide liquidity
services, which lowers the need for interbank borrowing and hence costly bank leverage. Since
the model focuses on the provision of payment services, there is no benefit of government bonds
per se, nothing is lost by just issuing reserves. More generally, the way fiscal policy is conducted
independently of monetary policy may imply that there is a constraint on b. We can then view the
welfare costs as a function in λ and κ with b a fixed parameter.
The return on reserves directly affects neither the welfare cost nor the capital-structure curve.
We can therefore find the optimal solution in two steps. We first find a point (λ, κ) on the capital-
structure curve (for given b) that minimizes `¯(λ, κ). The optimal real return on reserves is then
whatever return shifts the liquidity-management curve so that the equilibrium occurs precisely at
that optimal point. If the indifference curves are convex and the capital-structure curve is curved
less – which is a reasonable assumption if the effects of interbank credit are relatively small – then
we obtain an interior solution as shown in Figure 6.
Should reserves be abundant? The figure suggests that this is not necessarily the case.
If the government leverage cost curve slopes upward very steeply, then it may be optimal to run
a system with scarce reserves, in which real government leverage is much lower than the amount
of debt needed to run the payment system. In this case, it is better to have banks rely on other
collateral in order to back inside money. However, if the government can borrow cheaply at will, so
that its leverage cost is close to zero, then it makes sense to move towards narrow banking where

29
reserves make up the lion’s share of bank portfolios.

6 Securities markets and the payment system

This section introduces uncertainty premia, the key source of fluctuations in asset prices, and
institutional investors. We then study the effect of uncertainty on the supply of inside money as
well as unconventional monetary policy – the government buys trees that carry uncertainty premia.
Moreover, we study a version of the model with two types of asset management firms: carry traders
buy trees on margin, whereas active traders face liquidity constraints for some asset purchases.
Both types of firms otherwise work like banks: they are competitive firms owned by households
that have access to a subset of trees and maximize shareholder value.

6.1 Introducing uncertainty and collateral quality

We capture a change in uncertainty as a change in beliefs about asset payoffs: we assume that
households behave as if tree dividends x are permanently lower by s percent from the next date
on. Actual tree payoffs remain constant throughout. One way to think about these beliefs is that
households are simply pessimistic. Our preferred interpretation is ambiguity aversion: households
contemplate a range of models for payoffs, and evaluate consumption plans using the worst case
model. In either case, the key effect of pessimistic valuation is to generate premia on assets: an
observer (such as an econometrician measuring the equity premium) will observe low prices relative
to payoffs and hence high average returns.
To define equilibrium, we must take a stand not only on beliefs about exogenous variables, but
also about endogenous variables such as the nominal price level and asset prices. We follow Ilut
and Schneider (2015) who also capture the presence of uncertainty with low subjective mean beliefs
about exogenous variables: beliefs about endogenous variables follow from agents’ knowledge of the
structure of the economy. In particular, agents know the policy rule of the government and that
banks maximize shareholder value given the households’ discount factor. Households’ worst case
beliefs thus also affect bank decisions; shareholder value (4) is replaced by its worst case expectation.
Appendix A.7 characterizes steady state equilibrium with uncertainty. Mechanically, agents live
in a steady state with all variables constant, yet act as if the economy is on a transition path to a
worst case steady state with lower tree payoffs in the future. In general, dynamics are characterized
by first finding the transition path to derive the law of motion for endogenous variables, and then
combining that law of motion with the true dynamics of the exogenous variables. We show that
the transition path converges to the worst case steady state after one period, and that the bank
ratios in the actual and worst case steady state coincide. These properties allow simple graphical
analysis, as in the case without uncertainty.
Uncertainty premia on assets. Asset prices reflect uncertainty in two ways. First, agents
act as if payoffs will be lower and hence value trees less. At the same time, however, they discount
future payoffs at a lower rate. This is because they understand the quantity equation, know that
the government is committed to a certain growth rate g of nominal liabilities, and therefore fear
that lower overall output generates higher inflation. Real returns on nominal assets thus reflect
worst case inflation π̃, which is higher than actual inflation. In particular, since the nominal rate
on reserves is fixed, the cost of liquidity next period is perceived to be high.
To see the effect of both forces on asset prices, consider the value of a tree held by households.

30
A drop in tree payoff of s percent implies that agents expect output to be permanently lower by
τ s percent, where τ = x/ (Ω + x) is the share of tree payoffs in output. If a tree was held by
households, its steady state price would be
Q x 1−s
= u (s) ; u (s) = . (24)
P δ 1 − τs
The factor u reflects compensation for uncertainty. If s = 0, then u (s) = 1, and the price is the
present value x/δ. The same result obtains if τ = 1: if all output comes from trees, then the
cash flow and discount rate effects on asset prices exactly offset. In the interesting case where
tree payoffs represent some intermediate share of output, u is strictly between zero and one, so
uncertainty lowers prices.
To see how uncertainty generates premia on assets, consider an econometrician who observes
tree prices as well as payoffs. The return on trees measured in steady state is
Q/P + x
= 1 + δ/u (s) .
Q/P
As payoff uncertainty s increases, u declines and the return on the tree increases to compensate
investors. If there was also a second “safe” tree held by households that earns exactly the discount
rate, the econometrician would measure an equity premium on the uncertain tree. In terms of
comparative statics, an increase in uncertainty captured by an increase in s leads to higher premia
and lower prices.
Uncertainty and collateral quality. It is natural to assume that uncertain trees are also
worse collateral. To capture this effect, we make the weight that trees receive in the aggregation of
collateral explicitly a decreasing function ρ (s) of payoff uncertainty s. A change in uncertainty thus
has two effects on banks’ tree portfolios. There is a direct effect on prices that lowers the total value
of collateral available to banks. In addition, uncertainty makes trees worse collateral per dollar of
funds invested in them.
Since uncertain trees still provide some collateral benefits, banks continue to hold all trees in an
equilibrium with uncertainty. From the first order condition for trees – derived in the appendix –
the value of a tree held by banks is
u (s) x
q= . (25)
δ + ρ (s) c0 (κ)
Comparing to the frictionless price in (24), an increase in uncertainty lowers the price more since it
must compensate banks not only for a lower expected payoff, but also for lower collateral quality.
Characterizing equilibrium with uncertainty We can study equilibria with uncertainty
using the same graphical analysis as in the previous section. The appendix shows that we only
need to replace the value of trees q in the capital-structure curve (18) by the new valuation formula
(25). The liquidity-management curve and the determination of the price level are not affected by
changes in s. The richer model allows us to discuss the effects of an increase in uncertainty on asset
prices and inflation; this is taken up in the next section.

6.2 An increase in uncertainty and policy responses

How does the payment system respond to an increase in uncertainty? An increase in s lowers the
value of uncertain trees (25) and hence the amount of collateral banks can use to back deposits.

31
 collateral ratio

collateral ratio
liquidity ratio liquidity ratio

(a) Higher uncertainty shifts the capital structure curve. (b) Quantitative easing: central bank buys trees.

Figure 7: Higher uncertainty and unconventional monetary policy.

Since less other collateral is available, it takes a larger liquidity ratio to achieve any given collateral
ratio κ, and the capital structure moves to the right as in Figure 7. As long as reserves are scarce,
banks hold more liquidity and thus choose lower collateral ratios.
The spillover from asset markets to the payment system via bank balance sheets thus leads to
deflation as the money multiplier declines. At the same time, the scarcity of collateral pushes the
real interest rate down. If the uncertainty shock is sufficiently strong, the economy can move all
the way into the abundant reserve region where the overnight interbank market shuts down. We
can thus arrive at abundance of reserves even if policy (described the standard central bank tools
iR − π and b) does not change.
An increase in uncertainty is an attractive candidate for a shock that could have occurred at
the beginning of the recent financial crisis. It is consistent with an increase in asset premia, a drop
in uncertain asset prices, a decline in the overnight interest rate all the way to the reserve rate as
well as a decline in bank collateral and an effective shutdown of interbank Federal Funds lending.
However, we did not see a large deflation – after an initial small drop in late 2008 the price level
remained quite stable over time.
One-time expansion of government liabilities. A candidate for the absence of strong
deflation during the financial crisis is a one-time increase in nominal government liabilities. Suppose
that the Treasury issues a lot of new debt, some of which is then purchased by the central bank so
as to keep the ratio b of debt held by the public to reserves constant. Suppose further that this is
perceived as a one time change, with a stable path of nominal liabilities thereafter.
Bank portfolios do not react to a one-time increase in government liabilities; our two curves
do not shift. An increase in government liabilities is neutral: the only response is that the price
level increases proportionately to maintain the same real value of government liabilities. The real

32
interest rate and leverage do not change, and the economy remains in the abundant reserves regime.
A joint increase in uncertainty and government debt can thus move the economy into a period of
abundant reserves with low asset prices, collateral and real rates, but stable inflation.
Unconventional monetary policy. An alternative response by central banks to a decline in
asset values has been to purchase low quality collateral, such as risky mortgage backed securities.
We start from an initial equilibrium with abundant reserves M0 , price level P0 and collateral ratio
κ. Suppose the government injects reserves to purchase all risky trees from banks’ balance sheet,
that is, new reserves are chosen such that, at the new equilibrium with reserves M̃0 , price level P̃0
and collateral ratio κ̃, we have
P̃0 u (s) x
M̃0 − M0 = .
δ + ρ (s) c0 (κ̃)
The effect of the purchase is displayed in the right panel of Figure 7. As trees are removed from
bank balance sheets, the capital-structure curve moves to the right.
After the additional injection, reserves continue to be abundant, so the policy has no effect
on the collateral ratio. However, the policy does increase the price level and thus counteracts the
deflationary effect of higher uncertainty. In the new equilibrium, collateral is M̃0 /P̃0 which equals
the real value of old reserves M0 /P̃0 plus the full real value of trees. In contrast, collateral in
the initial equilibrium was given by the real value of reserves M0 /P0 as well as the value of trees
multiplied by the collateral quality weight ρ (s) < 1. Since the collateral ratio is the same in the
two equilibria, it must be that P̃0 > P0 .
Unconventional policy thus works by replacing low quality real collateral on bank-balance sheets
with high quality nominal collateral. Since reserves continue to be abundant and the real return
on reserves stays the same, this does not actually lead to an increase in real collateral. However,
backed by the new reserves, banks provide more inside money, which is inflationary in the short
run. Compared with an outright increase in reserves, the inflationary effect of tree purchases is
smaller as trees are removed from the collateral pool.
Tree purchases by the central bank have two additional, more subtle, effects. First, it makes
the capital-structure curve steeper, which reduces the impact of any changes in the reserve rate on
short-run inflation. Second, removing trees from bank balance sheets reduces banks’ exposure to
further shocks to asset quality. For example, suppose that once all trees have been bought by the
government, the uncertainty shock is reversed and asset prices recover. The payment system would
not benefit from this recovery as banks no longer have any trees on their balance sheet. In this
case, the economy will remain in an abundant reserves environment after a financial crisis.

6.3 Carry traders

So far, the effect of asset values on bank balance sheets is direct: it requires bank investment in
trees. In this section, we introduce institutional investors who borrow short-term from banks in
order to invest in trees. We call these investors “carry traders” – they do not actively trade trees
but roll over their debt. This creates an additional link between asset markets and banks that
operates even if banks only engage in short-term lending. Monetary policy can affect carry traders’
funding cost.
Carry traders are competitive firms that issue equity and borrow overnight. They invest in a
special set of trees that banks do not have access to. We denote the fruit from carry trade trees by

33
x∗ . Like banks, carry traders face leverage costs, captured by a decreasing convex function c∗ that
could be different from the cost function cb assumed for banks.13 The collateral ratio of a carry
trader is defined as the market value of his tree holdings divided by overnight credit Ft∗ :

Q∗t θt∗
κ∗t = .
Ft∗

We assume further that carry traders are more optimistic about the payoff of trees than house-
holds: they perceive uncertainty s∗ < s whereas households perceive s. The idea here is that the
firm employs specialized employees whom households trust to make asset-management decisions.
As a result, the spread relevant for investment in carry trader trees — indirectly through investment
by carry traders — carries the lower uncertainty premium s∗ .
Optimal investment and borrowing. Carry traders’ first-order condition for overnight bor-
rowing resembles that of banks (equation (A.8) in the appendix), except that it does not provide
liquidity benefits: the return on equity must be smaller than the real overnight rate plus the marginal
cost of leverage. We focus on steady states only and drop time subscripts. Since we already know
that the real rate is lower than δ in equilibrium, it is always optimal for carry traders to borrow
and we directly write the condition as an equality:

δ = i − π + c∗ (κ) − c∗0 (κ∗ )κ∗ . (26)

Carry traders’ collateral ratio is higher in equilibrium when interest rates are high.
Like banks, carry traders hold all trees accessible to them. This is due not only to the collateral
benefit conveyed by trees, but also to carry traders’ relative optimism. From carry traders’ first
order condition, the value of trees held by carry traders
u∗ x∗ 1 − s∗
q∗ = ; u∗ =
δ + c∗0 (κ∗ ) 1 − sy

where sy is the worst case loss of output; it depends on the weighted average of losses on the different
trees in the economy. When interest rates or uncertainty is low, carry traders apply a lower effective
discount rate to trees, which results in higher tree prices.
The amount of carry trader borrowing in steady state equilibrium is

F ∗ = q ∗ /κ∗ . (27)

Lower interest rates increase both leverage and the value of collateral, and therefore increase bor-
rowing. Moreover, an increase in uncertainty (that is, an increase in s∗ ) lowers collateral values and
borrowing.
Equilibrium with carry traders. Our graphical analysis of equilibrium remains qualitatively
similar when carry traders are added to the model. The only change is that carry trader borrowing
now enters on the asset side of the banking sector. We can thus add in the numerator of the
collateral ratio (18) a term B ∗ (κ) that expresses carry trader borrowing as a function of bank
13
We do not consider welfare effects of leverage for carry traders – instead we focus on the positive implications of
margin trading. We thus assume for simplicity that leverage costs of carry traders are paid lump sum to households
so that they have no impact on welfare.

34
collateral. We obtain the function B ∗ by substituting for κ∗ in (27) from (26) and then substituting
for the interest rate from the bank first-order condition from (10). The function B ∗ is decreasing: if
banks have more collateral, the interest is higher and carry traders borrow less. The leverage cost
incurred by carry traders also lowers equilibrium consumption – as with the level of bank leverage
costs above, we treat this effect as negligible for the shape of the capital structure curve.
We can now revisit the effect of changes in beliefs and monetary policy in an economy with
carry traders. Suppose first that, starting from an equilibrium with scarce reserves, there is an
increase in uncertainty. The new effect is that, as carry traders value trees less, they demand fewer
loans from banks. This lowers bank collateral and shifts the capital-structure curve to the right.
The liquidity-management curve does not change. In the new equilibrium, bank collateral is even
lower and the interest rate is lower, as is the price level. The deflationary effect therefore amplifies
the increase in uncertainty about bank trees considered earlier. The additional prediction is that
we should see a decline in funding of institutional investors with short-term credit from payment
intermediaries, such as a decline in repo extended by money-market mutual funds to broker-dealers.
It is also interesting to reconsider the effect of monetary policy. Suppose policy engineers a
change in the mix of bank assets or their value that lowers the real overnight interest rate. Carry
traders borrow more and bid up the prices of the trees they invest in. As one segment of the tree
market thus increases in value, the aggregate value of trees also rises: there is a tree market boom.
Importantly, this is not a real interest rate effect: the discount rate of households, which is used to
value trees held by households, is unchanged. The effect comes solely from the effect of monetary
policy on the overnight rate and hence on carry traders’ funding costs.

6.4 Active traders

Carry traders provide collateral to banks and thus affect the supply of inside money. We now
introduce another group of institutional investors with a demand for inside money. “Active traders”
periodically rebalance their portfolios as their view of tree payoffs changes, and they require cash
to pay for new trees. The money demand of active traders counteracts the supply side effects due
to changes in the collateral values or the borrowing by carry traders. At the same time, monetary
policy also affects their funding costs.
Active traders are competitive firms that issue equity and hold inside money as well as a special
set of trees denoted Θ̂. There are many active traders and each is optimistic about one particular
“favorite” tree: the trader perceives uncertainty ŝ < s about this tree. In contrast, households and
other active traders perceive uncertainty s, but they trust that when they invest through active
traders, they are exposed to less uncertainty, ŝ < s. Active traders also perceive uncertainty s
about all other trees. Every period, the identity of the favorite tree within the subset Θ̂ changes to
some other tree in the subset in an iid fashion.
To generate a need for inside money, we assume that active traders must pay for new tree
purchases with prearranged payment instruments or intraday credit. Active trader i faces the
liquidity constraint Z
Qjt θ̂i,j,t dj = Ii,t + D̂i,t−1 + L̂i,t−1 ,
Θ̂

where Ii,t is the intraday credit position, D̂i,t−1 are deposits that the fund keeps at its bank together
with credit lines L̂i,t−1 .

35
 Like a bank, active trader i faces a limit on intraday credit
Ii,t ≤ ν̂(D̂i,t−1 + L̂i,t−1 ),
where ν̂ is a parameter that governs netting in tree transactions. It is generally different from the
parameter ν that was introduced to describe netting among banks in (21), since it captures netting
by a clearing and settlement system for the securities that active traders invest in.
Active traders choose inside money, trees and their shareholder payout. We focus on equilibria
in which every active trader always holds only his favorite tree; we can assume that the perceived
uncertainty on other trees is high enough. Since money is costly – the real rate on deposits is below
the discount rate – active traders hold as little money as necessary in order to purchase the entire
outstanding amount of their new favorite tree in case the identity of their favorite tree changes. It
follows that the intraday credit limit binds in equilibrium, a form of “cash-in-the-market pricing”.
Optimal investment and deposits. Much like households, active traders equate their marginal
liquidity benefit to the

marginal cost of money holdings, given by the Lthe opportunity cost of de-
h D
posits it − it − πt+1 or equivalently the interest rate on credit lines it−1 . The liquidity benefit in
turn is due to traders’ ability to invest in their favorite tree, which carries a return that compen-
sates them for cost of liquidity. As in the previous section, tree prices also reflect uncertainty about
output and hence inflation. It is again convenient to denote the worst loss of output by sy which
depends on the weighted average of losses on the different trees in the economy.
The steady state price of trees held by active traders can then be written as
x̂ 1 − ŝ
q̂ = û iL
; û := .
δ + 1+v̂ 1 − sy

Here the factor û is again compensation for uncertainty, which is less than one if the expected
payoff loss on active trader trees is larger than the expected output drop. The second term in the
denominator shows that prices reflect traders’ need for inside money: prices are higher when their
cost of liquidity iL is lower and netting is more efficient (higher v̂).
Equilibrium money holdings by active traders are proportional to the market value of active
traders’ favorite trees:
q̂
D̂ + L̂ = .
1 + γ̂
The money demand by active traders is interest elastic, in contrast to the inelastic demand from
households. This is a stark way to capture the idea that financial institutions responds more strongly
to changes in liquidity costs.
Since the household and active trader sector differ in their money demand, the share of inside
money used in the goods versus the asset market changes over time. We define active traders’
money share as
D̂ + L̂ q̂/ (1 + ν̂)
α̂ = = .
D+L C + q̂/ (1 + ν̂)
If bank customers’ liquidity becomes cheaper, the value of active traders’ trees increases and their
share of the total supply of inside money goes up. In equilibrium, the share is an increasing function
α̂ (λ, κ) of the two bank ratios λ and κ, assuming as before that the impact of λ and κ on equilibrium
consumption is small. The key force here is that higher κ and λ lower the cost of end-user liquidity
and hence boost the value of active traders’ trees.

36
 Equilibrium with active traders. We focus on local changes to equilibria with abundant
reserves. Our graphical analysis of equilibrium bank ratios remains qualitatively similar when active
traders are added to the model. The key difference is the effect of active traders on the nominal
price level. In steady state, the price level grows at the rate g according to
Mt
Pt = (1 − α̂ (λ, κ)) .
λC
A higher active trader share thus works like lower velocity. If the cost of liquidity is lower, then
active traders absorb more inside money. As less money is used in the goods market, the price level
declines.
We can now revisit the effect of changes in beliefs and monetary policy in an economy with active
traders. Suppose first that there is an increase in uncertainty. As active traders value trees less,
they demand less money. This increases the collateral ratio of banks and shifts the capital-structure
curve to the left. The liquidity-management curve does not change. In the new equilibrium, bank
collateral and the interest rate are higher, as is the price level. In other words, active traders are a
force that generates the opposite response to a change in uncertainty from banks and carry traders.
Since in the typical economy all traders are present to some extent, we can conclude that their
relative strength is important. An additional prediction is that we should see a decline in money –
either deposits or credit lines – provided to institutional investors.
We can also reconsider the effect of monetary policy. Suppose once more that policy lowers
the real overnight interest rate. The opportunity cost of holding deposits falls and active traders
demand more money. At the same time, they bid up the prices of the trees they invest in. Again a
segment of the tree market increases in value and the aggregate value of trees also rises: there is a
tree market boom. Again the effect is not due a change in the discount rate, but instead a change
in the funding cost: here it affects active traders’ strategy which requires money in order to wait
for trading opportunities.

7 Related literature
In this section we discuss how our results relate to existing work in monetary economics.
Balance sheet effects and government liabilities
In our model, welfare costs derive from “balance sheet effects” and policy matters by changing
the asset mix in the economy. This theme is familiar from other work on unconventional monetary
policy. Several papers study setups where banks are important to channel funds to certain borrowers.
By purchasing the bonds of these borrowers, policy can effectively substitute public credit when
weak balance sheets constrain private credit (e.g. Cúrdia and Woodford 2010, Christiano and Ikeda
2011, Gertler and Karadi 2011, Gertler, Kiyotaki and Queralto 2012).14 Our model differs from this
literature in how banks add value – their special ability is not lending, but the handling of payment
instructions.
Since the price level depends on the supply of payment instruments, shocks to bank assets have
deflationary effects in our model. If all payment instruments are taken to be deposits, we obtain a
collapse of the money multiplier along the lines of Friedman and Schwartz (1963). Brunnermeier
14
Buera and Nicolini (2014) also consider the effect on monetary policy on balance sheets in a model of entrepreneurs
who face collateral and cash-in-advance constraints.

37
and Sannikov (2016) also consider the link between asset values and the supply of inside money
by banks. In their model, banks’ special ability is to build diversified portfolios and deposits are a
perfect substitute to outside money as a store of value. In contrast, in our model inside money is
a medium of exchange for bank customers, and outside money works like an intermediate good for
producing inside money, rather than a substitute.
Asset pricing and money
In our model, collateral benefits generate market segmentation. We thus arrive endogenously
at “intermediary asset pricing” equations that are reminiscent of those in He and Krishnamurthy
(2013) or Bocola (2016). Unlike our banks, banks in those models are investors with limited net
worth who are assumed to hold some assets because they have special investment abilities.
The interaction of liquidity and collateral benefits in our model also generates permanent liq-
uidity effects. In contrast, the literature on monetary policy with partially segmented asset markets
(for example, Lucas 1990, Alvarez, Atkeson and Kehoe 2002) obtains temporary liquidity effects;
collateral benefits play no role there.
Asset values in our model depend on the cost of inside money to institutional investors. A
permanent effect of monetary policy on asset values also obtains in Lagos and Zhang (2014) where
the inflation tax discourages trade between heterogeneous investors; this alters which investor prices
assets in equilibrium. The effect we derive is different because the cost of liquidity to bank customers
is not captured by the inflation tax; instead the cost of inside money depends on banks’ cost of
leverage. In particular, our mechanism is also operative when reserves are abundant.
Bank liquidity management and monetary policy
With scarce reserves, bank liquidity management matters for asset valuation, policy impact and
welfare in our model. The liquidity management problem arises because banks cannot perfectly
insure against liquidity shocks due to customer payment instructions, as in Bhattacharya and Gale
(1987).15 Recent work has discussed the interaction of monetary policy and liquidity management
with scarce versus abundant reserves (for example, Whitesell 2006, Keister, Monnet and McAndrews
2008)16 . While these papers consider more detail that is useful to understand the cross section of
banks, our stylized model tries to capture the main tradeoff and its interaction with other features
of the economy.
Several papers have incorporated bank liquidity management into DSGE models. Cúrdia and
Woodford (2011) study optimal monetary policy in a New Keynesian model.17 In their setup,
reserve policy can be stated in terms of a rule for the overnight interest rate and the reserves rate;
there is no need to formulate policy in terms of the quantity of reserves. Our setup is different
15
A related literature asks whether government supplied liquidity is useful when firms cannot perfectly insure
shocks to investment opportunities (for example, Woodford 1990, Holmstrom and Tirole 1998). An alternative
approach to bank liquidity, following Diamond and Dybvig (1983), considers optimal contracts offered by banks to
end users. This approach typically abstracts from interbank transactions; the focus is instead on optimal dependence
of contracts on end user liquidity needs, given information problems as well as the scope for multiple equilibria that
include bank runs.
16
Similar tradeoffs have been developed in the literature on the dynamics of the Federal Funds market (e.g. Ho
and Saunders 1985, Hamilton 1996, Afonso and Lagos 2015.)
17
Other notions of bank liquidity have also been explored in DSGE settings. Gertler and Kiyotaki (2010) consider
a model in which bank borrowing not only depends on bank net worth but also is fragile and subject to runs. Del
Negro, Eggertsson, Ferrero and Kiyotaki (2013) study a model in which assets become illiquid in the sense of being
harder to sell, as in Kiyotaki and Moore (2008).

38
because of market segmentation: the nominal interest rate is not directly connected to a household
marginal rate of substitution, but rather to bank leverage. Rules for interest rates are then not
enough to characterize the behavior of inflation – the supply of nominal government liabilities is
also relevant.
Bianchi and Bigio (2014) study a quantitative model in which banks have a special ability to
lend and face a perfectly elastic demand for debt as well as idiosyncratic liquidity shocks. Monetary
policy changes the tradeoff between reserves and interbank credit and hence the willingness of banks
to make loans. In contrast, the demand for inside money in our model comes from its role as a
medium of exchange for goods and securities; monetary policy affects the cost of money holdings
to bank customers, not only to banks.
In Drechsler, Savov and Schnabl (2016), banks are investors with relatively low risk aversion who
issue debt subject to aggregate liquidity shocks. Monetary policy changes the cost of self-insurance
via reserves and thereby affects banks’ willingness to take leveraged positions in risky assets as well
as the risk premium on those assets. In our model, monetary policy affects not only the funding
cost of banks, but also that of banks’ institutional clients; the two channels have opposite effects
on uncertainty premia.
The role of interest on reserves as a policy tool has recently received renewed attention. A number
of papers ask when the price level remains determinate (Sargent and Wallace 1985, Hornstein 2010,
Ennis 2014). Woodford (2012) and Ireland (2014) consider macroeconomic effects of interest on
reserves in a New Keynesian framework. Kashyap and Stein (2012) consider a model with a financial
sector; they emphasize the presence of quantity and price tools for macroeconomic and financial
stability, respectively.
Multiple media of exchange and liquidity premia
While our model allows for both deposits and credit lines in the bank-customer layer, we assume
that those instruments are perfect substitutes. An interesting related literature asks which instru-
ments are used in which transactions. In particular, Telyukova and Wright (2008) consider a model
in which both credit and money are used and explain apparently puzzling cost differences with con-
venience yields. Lucas and Nicolini (2015) distinguish currency and interest bearing accounts and
show that a model that makes this distinction can better explain the relationship between interest
rates and payment instruments. Nosal and Rocheteau (2011) survey models of payment systems.
In our model, asset values reflect collateral benefits to banks and hence indirectly benefits to
the payments system. Moreover, government policy can matter by changing the scarcity of collat-
eral that effectively backs inside money. Similar themes appear in “new monetarist” models with
multiple media of exchange.18 In models based on Lagos and Wright (2005), assets that are useful
in decentralized exchange earn lower returns. Several papers have recently studied collateralized
IOUs as media of exchange, following Kiyotaki and Moore (2005).
For example, in Williamson (2012, 2014) some payments are made with claims on bank portfolios
that contain money, government bonds or private assets; banks moreover provide insurance to
individuals against liquidity shocks. Rocheteau, Wright and Xiao (2015) consider payment via
money or government bonds (or, equivalently in their setup, IOUs secured by bonds). These
models give rise to regimes of scarcity or abundance for each medium of exchange. The real effects
of scarcity can be different for, say, bonds and money because money is used to purchase a different
18
See Lagos, Rocheteau and Wright (2014) for a recent survey.

39
set of goods.
While we also study how policy affects the scarcity of different assets like bonds and reserves, the
mechanisms we emphasize as well as our welfare conclusions differ in important ways.19 Indeed, in
our model only one medium of exchange helps in bank-customer transactions: inside money supplied
by banks. Since any bank commitment is costly, inside money is never abundant and collateral to
back it is always scarce – only the degree of scarcity changes and affects welfare. In contrast,
reserves can be scarce or abundant depending on their role in bank liquidity management.
In our two layer setup, whether scarcity affects asset prices or welfare thus depends crucially on
features of the banking system. For example, scarcity of bonds has different effects from scarcity
of reserves because reserves change banks’ liquidity management problem and the leverage costs of
tapping the overnight market. In addition, the price level in our model is related to the supply of
inside money by banks and hence the nominal collateral that banks hold. For example, the quantity
of nominal collateral available to banks shapes the price level response to policy.

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43
A Appendix
In this appendix we provide all the equations to accompany the analysis in the text. Sections
A.1 and A.2 derive household and bank first-order conditions, respectively. Section A.3 proves
Proposition 1. Section A.4 derives a system of equations characterizing equilibrium. Sections A.5
and A.6 proves Propositions 2 and 3, respectively. Section A.7 introduces uncertainty and Section
A.8 adds active traders.

A.1 Household optimization

Households can invest in deposits, bonds, trees and bank equity. In addition, they can take out
credit lines. We define Ytb as the aggregate dividends of the banking
sector, and write the price of
b b b
a claim to Yt as Qt. . Households then choose Ct , Dt , Lt , Bt , θt , θt to maximize utility subject to
the budget constraint

Pt Ct + Bt + Dt + Qt θt + Qbt θtb + iLt Lt−1

≤ Pt Ωt + Bt−1 (1 + it−1 ) + Dt−1 1 + iD b b b


t−1 + (Qt + Pt x)θt−1 + (Qt + Pt Yt )θt−1 .

Households further have to respect the cash-in-advance constraint

Pt Ct ≤ Dt−1 + Lt−1 .

At date t, purchases of consumption goods are constrained by deposits and credit lines arranged
the period before. The fee iLt for a credit line that allows for consumption at date t enters the date
t budget constraint.
We write the multiplier on the budget constraint as ωt /Pt where ωt is the marginal utility of
wealth. Similarly, we write the multiplier on the cash-in-advance constraint as µt /Pt . It is also
convenient to define real equity and tree prices qtb = Qbt /Pt and qt = Qt /Pt . The household first
order conditions for consumption, bonds, deposits, credit lines, bank equity and trees are then

1 = ωt + µt ,
1 + it
ωt ≥ βωt+1 ,
1 + πt+1
1 + iD
 
t µt+1
ωt ≥ β ωt+1 + ,
1 + πt+1 1 + πt+1
ωt+1 iLt+1 ≥ µt+1 ,
qtb ωt ≥ βωt+1 qt+1b
+ Ytb ,

qt ωt ≥ βωt+1 (qt+1 + xt ) .

The FOCs for assets are inequalities since no asset can be sold short. The FOC for an asset is
satisfied with equality if the household indeed holds the asset. Similarly, the inequality for credit
lines is satisfied with equality if households actually arrange any credit lines.
As usual, the pricing kernel for assets with real payoffs is given by the marginal rate of substi-
tution for wealth at date t versus t + 1. We define
ωt+1
β̂t := β (A.1)
ωt

1
as the date t price of a hypothetical asset that pays off one unit of consumption goods at date t.
Because of the cash-in-advance constraint, the marginal utilities of wealth and consumption need
not coincide in general. In steady state, however, we always have β̂t = β.
Deposits and credit lines are perfect substitutes as payment instruments. As a result, households
are indifferent as long as they imply the same liquidity cost – otherwise they pick only the cheaper
instrument. Indifference obtains if
1 + πt+1
− 1 + iD = iLt+1 .


t (A.2)
β̂t
The liquidity cost from deposits on the left hand side reflects the spread between a nominal asset
that does not provide liquidity (and hence has real return 1/β̂t ) and deposits. The liquidity cost
from credit lines on the right hand side reflects the cost of arranging a credit line.
The cash-in-advance constraint binds as long as the cost of liquidity is positive. Below we will
focus on the case where the liquidity prices iD and iL always satisfy (A.2). We denote the nominal
rate on an asset held by households as
1 + πt+1
iht = − 1, (A.3)
β̂t

so that the household cost of liquidity is given by the spread iht − iD

t .

The first-order conditions further imply that the date t cost of liquidity reflects the difference
between the marginal utilities of wealth and consumption at date t + 1:
1
iht − iD
t = − 1. (A.4)
ωt+1
If liquidity is more expensive then it is more difficult to transform wealth into consumption and the
gap between these marginal utilities widens.

A.2 Bank optimization

We now consider the bank optimization problem. We allow for credit lines and interbank netting.
To account for these features, we rewrite the bank liquidity constraint and the definition of the
collateral ratio as

λ̃t (Dt−1 + Lt−1 ) ≤ (1 + ν) (Mt−1 + Ft ) ,

Mt + ρQt θt + Bt
κt = . (A.5)
Dt + Lt + Ft
Here ν ≥ 0 is a parameter that captures the efficiency of netting arrangements among banks.
Banks maximize (4) subject to (A.5) and the budget constraint

Pt ytb = iLt−1 Lt−1 + Mt−1 1 + iR D

t−1 − Mt − Dt−1 1 + it−1 + Dt
+ (Bt−1 − Ft−1 ) (1 + it−1 ) − (Bt − Ft ) + ((Qt + Pt xt ) θt−1 − Qt θt )
− c (κt ) (Dt + Lt + Ft ). (A.6)

2
 First order conditions. We write the multiplier on the banks’ liquidity constraint (the first
inequality in A.5) as µ̃t /Pt . We also define the price of trees in units of consumption goods as
qt = Qt /Pt . On the asset side, banks’ first order conditions for reserves, trees and bonds chosen at
date t are
1 + iR Et µ̃t+1
β̂t t
− c0 (κt ) + (1 + ν) β̂t ≤ 1,
1 + πt+1 1 + πt+1
qt+1 + xt+1
β̂t − ρc0 (κt ) ≤ 1,
qt
1 + it
β̂t − c0 (κt ) ≤ 1. (A.7)
1 + πt+1
Since banks cannot sell assets short, the FOCs are inequalities. The FOC for an asset holds with
equality if the bank actually participates in the market for that asset.
On the liability side, the FOCs for deposits and overnight credit are

1 + iD Et µ̃t+1 λ̃t+1
β̂t t
+ c (κt ) − c0 (κt ) κt + β̂t ≥ 1,
1 + πt+1 1 + πt+1
1 + it
β̂t + (c (κt ) − c0 (κt ) κt ) − µ̃t (1 + ν) ≥ 1. (A.8)
1 + πt+1
Again, the FOCs are inequalities that are satisfied with equality if the bank actually issues the
liability. Comparing the last equations in (A.7) and (A.8), we have that in the range where κt > 1,
banks borrow overnight only if the liquidity constraint binds.
Finally the first order condition for credit lines is

iLt Et µ̃t+1 λ̃t+1

β̂t − (c (κt ) − c0 (κt ) κt ) + β̂t ≥ 0.
1 + πt+1 1 + πt+1

As long as (A.2) holds, banks are indifferent between offering credit lines and deposits as payment
instruments.

A.3 Proof of Proposition 1

We prove Proposition 1 for the case without credit lines. As discussed in the previous section, (A.2)
implies that both households and banks are indifferent between credit lines and deposits. For any
equilibrium without credit lines, we can therefore find a suitable interest rate iLt such that there is
an equilibrium for the economy with credit lines.
An equilibrium consists of consumption, prices, household portfolio and bank balance sheet
positions such that households and banks optimize and markets clear.

Property (i) follows from the household FOCs in Appendix A.1. In particular, equation (A.4)
says that ih > iD
t implies ωt+1 < 1 which means that the multiplier µt+1 on the cash-in-advance
constraint must be positive.
To show property (ii), we first note that some banks must be active in equilibrium. Indeed,
banks are the only issuers of deposits which are necessary for consumption. Moreover, banks are

3
the only agents who can invest in reserves. It follows that the first FOCs in both (A.7) and (A.8)
must hold with equality for some banks.
It follows that iR h
t < it . Indeed, if this is not true, then the bank FOC for reserves in (A.7)
cannot hold for any finite collateral ratio.
There cannot be an equilibrium in which households hold trees or bonds. Indeed, suppose
households were to hold, say, bonds at date t. From the household FOCs, the real interest rate on
bonds would have to be β̂t /1 − 1. Since active banks have finite collateral ratios κt and the leverage
cost function is strictly increasing, the FOC for bonds is then violated for any active bank. An
analogous argument works for trees.
Given that banks hold reserves, bonds and trees, the FOCs for these assets must hold with
equality. Property (iii) then follows directly from these equalities.
Consider property (iv). In any equilibrium with iR t ≤ it , all banks choose the same collateral
ratios. Indeed, suppose there are two banks such that bank 1 chooses a higher collateral ratio than
bank 2. Since c is strictly convex, −c0 (κ) is strictly decreasing. The FOCs for bonds and trees thus
imply that bank 1 cannot hold either of these assets. Bank 1 must therefore hold only reserves.
However, if its entire asset portfolio consists of reserves, then its expected multiplier µ̃t+1 is zero.
But since iR ≤ i, bank 1 should not hold any reserves, a contradiction.
In any equilibrium with iR t ≤ it , all banks also choose the same liquidity ratios λt . Indeed, since
banks choose the same collateral ratios, (A.8) implies that the Lagrange multiplier on the liquidity
constraint is the same for all constrained banks and equal to
1
µ̃ct := (c (κt ) − c0 (κt ) (κt − 1)) . (A.9)
1+ν
Since moreover the distribution of liquidity shocks is iid across banks, the conditional distribution
of µ̃ one period ahead is also the same: the multiplier is zero with probability G (λ) and equal to µ̃ct
otherwise. Since banks hold reserves, the first FOC in (A.7) holds with equality and implies equal
λs across banks.
Properties (v) and (vi) follow from the first order and market clearing conditions, as explained
in the text.

A.4 Equilibrium as solution to a difference equation

An equilibrium is described by sequences for consumption Ct , the interest rates iht , it and iD t , the
inflation rate πt , the tree price qt , the household marginal utility of wealth ωt , liquidity and collateral
ratios λt and κt a well as the multiplier for constrained banks µct . We fix exogenous paths of output
Yt as well as the growth rate of the reserves and bonds gt .
The difference equation consists of three blocks. The bank block consists of the banks’ first

4
order conditions for assets and liabilities (A.7)-(A.8) that hold with equality:

1 + iR
t 0 (1 − G (λt )) µ̃ct+1
− c (κ t ) + (1 + ν) = 1, (A.10)
1 + iht 1 + iht
1 + πt+1 qt+1 + xt+1
h
− ρc0 (κt ) = 1, (A.11)
1 + it qt
1 + it
− c0 (κt ) = 1, (A.12)
1 + iht
R λ̄  
c
iht − iD µ̃t+1 λt λ̃dG λ̃
t 0
+ c (κt ) − c (κt ) κt + = 0, (A.13)
1 + iht 1 + iht
1 + it
+ c (κt ) − c0 (κt ) κt − µ̃ct (1 + ν) = 1. (A.14)
1 + iht

The household block consists of equilibrium consumption with the function ` defined in Proposi-
tion 1 as well as the household first order condition for deposits and the definition of iht as households’
nominal discount rate:

Ct = Yt / (1 + ` (λt−1 , λt , κt , gt )) , (A.15)
1
iht − iD
t = − 1, (A.16)
ωt+1
1 + iht ωt+1
=β . (A.17)
1 + πt+1 ωt

The third block of equations uses market clearing to relate the collateral ratio, liquidity ratio
and output. To derive it, consider first market clearing in the overnight credit market. From the
proof of property (ii) above, banks borrow overnight only if the liquidity constraint binds. The
aggregate volume of overnight bank borrowing relative to deposits is therefore
Z λ̄ 
Ft 1    1
= λ̃ − λt dG λ̃ =: f (λt ) . (A.18)
Dt 1 + v λt 1+v

The function f is decreasing in λt : if interest rates are such that banks hold a lot of reserves, then
λt is high and banks rarely run out of reserves, so outstanding interbank credit is low. In this sense,
reserves and overnight borrowing are substitutes in liquidity management.
The third block of equations is

λt−1 (1 + bt ) 1+g
1+v
t 1
+ ρqt /Ct + f (λt−1 ) 1+v
κt = , (A.19)
(1 + gt ) λλt−1
t
1
+ f (λt−1 ) 1+v
Ct+1 λt−1
(1 + πt+1 ) = (1 + gt ) . (A.20)
Ct λt

The first equation describes market clearing in the goods market: consumption plus aggregate
leverage costs have to equal output. The second equation represents the aggregate relationship
between κ and λ from bank balance sheets. To derive it, we start from the definition of the
collateral ratio and substitute aggregate overnight credit (A.18) as well as the market value of trees,

5
and then express both the numerator and denominator in terms of ratios. Finally, the third equation
describes the evolution of inflation with a binding household cash-in-advance constraint.
The system is comprised of the ten equations (A.10)-(A.14), (A.15)-(A.17) and (A.19)-(A.20).
It has only one endogenous state variable λt−1 .
A steady state requires a constant interest rate on reserves, a constant growth rate of reserves
and bonds g as well as constant output Y and fruit from trees x. Endogenous variables are then
pinned down by g = π, 1 + ih = β −1 (1 + π), ih − iD = 1/ω − 1 as well as the bank first order
conditions
1 + iR 0 (1 − G (λ)) µ̃c
− c (κ) + (1 + ν) = 1,
1 + ih 1 + ih
q+x
β − ρc0 (κ) = 1,
q
1+i
− c0 (κ) = 1,
1 + ih  
c λ̄
R
h
i −i D µ̃ λ
λ̃dG λ̃
0
+ c (κ) − c (κ) κ + = 0,
1 + ih 1 + ih
1+i
h
+ c (κ) − c0 (κ) κ − µ̃c (1 + ν) = 1,
1+i
and the balance sheet condition
1+g 1
λ (1 + b) 1+v + ρq/C + f (λ) 1+v
κ= 1 . (A.21)
1 + g + f (λ) 1+v

A.5 Proof of Proposition 2

We fix an initial condition λ−1 close to the steady state and look for a solution to the difference
equation such that all variables except the inflation rate π1 are at steady state from t = 1 on. We
know from (A.19) that the state variable λ0 must already be at its steady state value. We also have
from (A.16) that ih0 − iD
0 already achieves its steady state value.

We now work through the equations for date 0 to find the remaining date 0 endogenous variables
together with the policy intervention b0 . We first note that (A.10), (A.12) and (A.13) are jointly
satisfied at the steady state values ih0 = ih , i0 = i and κ0 = κ. From (A.15) and (A.20), inflation π1
is given by
λ−1 Y0 1 + ` (λ, λ, κ, g)
1 + π1 = (1 + g0 ) . (A.22)
λ Y 1 + ` (λ−1 , λ, κ, g0 )
Substituting into (A.11) and using the fact that q1 and x1 achieve their steady state values, we
obtain
1 + π1 1 + π1
q0 = h
(q1 + x) = q . (A.23)
1+i 1+g
The date 0 price q0 thus differs from the steady state price q1 only if the short run inflation rate π1
differs from the long run inflation rate g.
For small enough deviations from steady state, we can find multipliers µ̃c0 ≥ 0 and ω0 < 1 to
satisfy (A.14) and (A.17), respectively. It thus remains to check whether (A.19) holds. Using the

6
above expressions for q0 and π1 , we obtain
1 + π1 1 + ` (λ−1 , λ, κ, g0 ) q 1 + g0 λ−1
q0 /C0 = q =
1+g Y0 C 1+g λ
and substituting into (A.19) we have
0 λ−1 q
λ−1 (1 + b0 ) 1+g
1+v
0
+ ρ 1+g
1+g λ C
1
+ f (λ−1 ) 1+v
κ= . (A.24)
(1 + g0 ) λ−1
λ
1
+ f (λ−1 ) 1+v
For an initial condition close enough to steady state, we can solve for an initial government asset
mix b0 ≥ 0 to make the equation hold.
If reserves are abundant at the initial condition λ−1 then b0 = 0 for any g0 and Y0 since the λ−1
and g0 cancel so the equation reduces to (A.21). With abundant reserves, no government trade at
date 0 is needed. We further have ` (λ−1 , λ, κ, g0 ) = ` (λ, λ, κ, g) .

We note a second useful special case of the proposition: a one time transitory shock to output.
If g0 = g and λ−1 = λ, then (A.24) implies b0 = b for any Y0 . In other words, an unanticipated
transitory shock to output similarly does not require a government trade – the bank ratios remain
in steady state, but there is a one time jump in the price level. The date 1 inflation rate in this
case is proportional to the output change: from (15), we have 1 + π1 = (1 + g) Y0 /Y.

A.6 Proof of Proposition 3

For period length ∆, we consider the household problem
XY
β ∆t U (Ct ) ∆

subject to the budget constraint and cash-in-advance constraint

Pt Ct ∆ + Bt + Dt + Qt θt + Qbt θtb + iLt Lt−∆
≤ Pt Ωt + Bt−∆ (1 + it−∆ ∆) + Dt−∆ 1 + iD b b b


t−∆ + (Qt + Pt x∆)θt−∆ + (Qt + Pt Yt ∆)θt−∆
Pt Ct ∆ ≤ (Dt−∆ + Lt−∆ ) ∆

The banks problem is to maximize shareholder value

XY
β ∆t ytb ∆

where cash flow is

Pt ytb ∆ = iLt−1 ∆Lt−∆ + Mt−1 1 + iR D



t−∆ ∆ − Mt − Dt−∆ 1 + it−∆ + Dt
+ (Bt−∆ − Ft−∆ ) (1 + it−∆ ∆) − (Bt − Ft ) + ((Qt + Pt xt ∆) θt−∆ − Qt θt )
− c (κt ) ∆(Dt + Lt ) + Ft ).
and the constraints are
λ̃t (Dt−∆ + Lt−∆ ) ≤ (1 + ν) (Mt−∆ + Ft )
Mt + ρQt θt + Bt
κt =
Dt + Lt + Ft

7
 For given ∆, the difference equation characterizing equilibrium can be derived in the same way
as in the proof of Proposition 1. We are interested only in the equations determining steady state.
We know that the steady state discount factor is 1/ (1 + δ∆) .
For the first block – derived from bank first order conditions – we start from the analogue to
(A.10)-(A.14) for general ∆, set all variables to steady state and multiply through by (1 + δ∆) and
(1 + π∆) whenever these variables appear in a denominator:

1 + iR ∆ − c0 (κ) ∆ + (1 + ν) (1 − G (λ)) µ̃c ∆ = (1 + δ∆) (1 + π∆)

q + x∆
− ρc0 (κ) ∆ = 1 + δ∆
q
1 + i∆ − c0 (κ) ∆ = (1 + δ∆) (1 + π∆)
Z λ̄  
h D 0 c


i − i ∆ + (c (κ) − c (κ) κ) ∆ + µ̃ ∆ λ̃dG λ̃ = 0
λ
1 + i∆ + c (κ) − c0 (κ) κ − µ̃c ∆ (1 + ν) = (1 + δ∆) (1 + π∆)

From the second block, we have

  
−1 −1
λ
C∆ = Y ∆ cg λ (1 + b) λ (1 + b) + c (κ) 1 + f (λ)
λ (1 + g∆)
 
1
ih − iD ∆ =


−1 ∆
ω

The third block becomes

λ (1 + b) 1+g∆
1+v
q
+ ρ Ω+x 1
+ f (λ) 1+v
κ= 1
1 + g∆ + f (λ) 1+v
1+g =1+π

We now take the limit as ∆ → 0. The bank block simplifies to

iR − c0 (κ) + (1 + ν) (1 − G (λ)) µ̃c = δ + π

x − ρc0 (κ) q = qδ∆
i − c0 (κ) = δ + π
Z λ̄  
h D 0 c


i − i + (c (κ) − c (κ) κ) + µ̃ λ̃dG λ̃ = 0
λ
i + (c (κ) − c0 (κ) κ) − µ̃c (1 + ν) = δ + π.

Substituting the fifth and third equation into the first, we obtain the liquidity management
curve
δ = iR − π − c0 (κ) + (1 − G (λ)) (c (κ) − c0 (κ) (κ − 1)) . (A.25)

From the second equation in the bank block, the tree price is
x
q=
δ − ρc0 (κ)

8
From the second block, we have C = Y / 1 + `¯(λ, κ) , where

`¯(λ, κ) := cg λ−1 (1 + b)−1 λ (1 + b) + c (κ) (1 + f (λ)) = ` (λ, λ, κ, 0)

Substituting into the third block, we obtain the capital structure curve
¯
1
λ (1 + b) 1+v + ρ 1+`(λ,κ) x
δ−ρc0 (κ) Y
1
+ f (λ) 1+v
κ= 1
1 + f (λ) 1+v

The liquidity management curve is flat in (κ, λ)-plane if λ ≥ λ̄ since the G (λ) = 0. For λ < λ̄,
it is decreasing since G is increasing, c00 (κ) > 0 and

d
(c (κ) − c0 (κ) (κ − 1)) = c0 (κ) − c0 (κ) − c00 (κ) (κ − 1) < 0
dκ
for κ > 1. Ignoring the small effect from leverage cost `¯(λ, κ), f 0 (λ) ≤ 0 and c00 (κ) > 0 imply that
the capital structure curve is monotonically increasing in (κ, λ) plane.
If δ − iR − π < −c0 (1), all points on the liquidity management curve satisfy κ > 1. If

¯
1+`(0,1) x 1
ρ δ−ρc0 (1) Y + f (0) 1+v
1> 1 ,
1 + f (0) 1+v

the capital structure is below one at λ = 0. This is true in particular if ρ or x/Y become small.

A.7 Steady state with uncertainty

We find a steady state with uncertainty in three steps, following Ilut and Schneider (2015). We
first determine the “worst case” steady state, that is, the steady state to which the economy would
converge were the worst case scenario contemplated by agents to actually occur. Here the worst
case scenario is that the payoff of the trees is multiplied by 1 − s.
The second step characterizes agents’ perceptions of the equilibrium dynamics. Since agents see
the actual tree payoffs x, they behave as if they are on a transition path from a “better” initial
condition to the worst case steady state. The third step then characterizes the actual dynamics
by combining the law of motion for the endogenous variables implied by the second step with the
actual dynamics of the exogenous variables.
For the first step, worst case steady state prices and bank ratios follow from the equations derived
in Proposition 3, with x replaced by x (1 − s). We indicate worst case steady state values by stars.
In particular, the worst case steady state ratios λ∗ and κ∗ are determined by the intersection of
the liquidity management and capital-structure curves (A.25)-(A.21), with x replaced by x (1 − s) .
Since output and consumption are constant in the worst case stedy state, inflation is given by the
growth rate of nominal liabilities g, as in the steady state without uncertainty.
For the second step, consider agents’ perceptions of the equilibrium dynamics. Agents observe
every period the true tree payoff x which is larger than the worst case steady state payoff. As a
result, agents always act as if they are on a transition path away from an initial transitory shock x
that is higher than the (perceived) steady state value x (1 − s). Moreover, the actual steady state

9
value of the endogenous state variable λ must be such such that agents’ behavior leaves λ constant
over time given their worst case beliefs.
Formally, we are looking for a solution to the system of difference equations derived in Appendix
A.4 together with an initial condition for the endogenous state variable λ such that (i) the solution
converges to the worst case steady state, and (ii) the endogenous state variable λ is constant in the
first period of the transition path. We now use Proposition 2 to show that there is a solution with
initial condition λ = λ∗ , that is, the worst case and actual steady state value of the liquidity ratio
are identical.
Consider the special case of that in Proposition 2 with the steady state values given by the worst
case steady state values (λ∗ , Y ∗ , g), and initial conditions λ0 = λ∗ , Y0 = Ω + x, and g0 = g. As noted
below the proof of Proposition 2 in Appendix A.5, for this case the government bond-reserve ratio
at date 0 is b0 = b∗ , the steady state ratio. Moreover, the inflation rate is given by (1 + g) Y0 /Y at
date 1 and settles at g thereafter.
We have thus found a transition path with the required properties. Starting from the worst case
steady state λ = λ∗ , a transitory shock that increases all tree payoffs by a factor of 1/ (1 − s) thus
induces banks to maintain the liquidity ratio constant at λ∗ .20 From the proof of Proposition 2, we
also know that the collateral ratio κ is also unchanged in response to the shock. We can therefore
conclude that the actual steady state ratios (λ, κ) are identical to the worst case steady state ratios
(λ∗ , κ∗ ) .
Since the transition path captures agents’ perceptions, we can define the steady state perceived
inflation rate as.
Y0 Ω+x
1 + π̃ = (1 + g) ∗ = (1 + g) (A.26)
Y Ω + x (1 − s)
at date 1 and settles at g thereafter.
The third step is simplified by the fact that the actual evolution of output – the ambiguous
exogenous variable – enters only one equation, namely (A.20). the last equation in (??) that relates
inflation to output growth. It implies that the actual steady state inflation rate equal to g and
therefore lower than agents’ perceived inflation π̃. This is because agents fear a drop in output that
will translate into higher inflation for given growth of nominal liabilities.
Graphical analysis and steady state asset prices
To derive the steady state price of trees, we use (A.23) from the proof of Proposition 2 together
with the definition τ = x/ (Ω + x) and make explicit the dependence of the weight ρ on the spread
s:

1 + π̃ ∗ Ω+x x (1 − s)
q= q =
1+g Ω + x (1 − s) δ + ρ (s) c0 (κ)
x 1−s x
= 0
= u (s) (A.27)
δ + ρ (s) c (κ) 1 − τ s δ + ρ (s) c0 (κ)
We also note that while the realized real interest rate is i − g = δ+ mb(κ) as before, the ex ante
20
Intuitively, since output is expected to fall agents worry that inflation is temporarily higher than the growth
rate of nominal government liabilities and hence expect a higher cost of liquidity. As a result, future tree payoffs are
discounted at a lower rate and the ratio of tree value to output is the same as in the worst case steady state.

10
real interest rate i − π1 = δ̂ − c0 (κ) reflects the lower discount rate induced by output and hence
inflation uncertainty.
With this formula in hand, the graphical analysis of optimal ratios works the same way as in
the absence of uncertainty. As the period length becomes short, the CS curve is described by (18)
with the new price formula (A.27). The liquidity-management curve is described by (A.25), as in
the case without uncertainty.

A.8 Equilibrium with active traders

Active traders maximize shareholder value, with nominal dividends given by

(Q̂t + x̂t )θt−1 − Q̂t θt − iLt−1 L̂t−1 − D̂t + D̂t−1 1 + iD

t−1

where θt is the number of trees bought at date t and L̂t is the credit line arranged at t − 1 in order
to pay for trees at t and D̂t are deposits chosen at t.
The first order conditions for active traders can be written as

iLt = iht − iD
t = µ̂t+1 (1 + ν̂)
1 + πt+1
q̂t (1 + µ̂t ) = (q̂t+1 + x̂t+1 (1 − ŝ)) (A.28)
1 + iht

where µ̂t is the multiplier on active traders’ liquidity constraint multiplied by the price level. The
interest rate on credit lines – bank customers’ cost of liquidity – is equated to active traders’ liquidity
benefit. The expected payoffs of active trader trees in the second equation incorporate the worst
case payoff on trees.
To capture the quantity of deposits absorbed by active traders, we define their share αt =
(D̂t + L̂t )/ (Dt + Lt ). The equilibrium share satisfies

q̂t
αt−1 = (A.29)
q̂t + (1 + ν̂) Ct

Active traders absorb more inside money if the netting system is less efficient (low ν̂).
Since money held by active traders does not directly affect the price level, the leverage and
inflation equations contain only the share of inside money that circulates in the goods market:

λt−1 (1 + bt ) 1+g
1+v
t
+ ρ qt (1−α
Ct
t−1 ) 1
+ f (λt−1 ) 1+v
κt =
(1 + gt ) λλt−1
t
1
+ f (λt−1 ) 1+v
Ct+1 λt−1 1 − αt−1
(1 + πt+1 ) = (1 + gt ) (A.30)
Ct λt 1 − αt

The system of difference equations with active traders is thus given by (A.10)-(A.14), (A.15)-
(A.17), (A.28), (A.29) and (A.30). Endogenous state variables are now both the banks’ liquidity
ratio λ and the active trader money share α.

11
Worst case steady state
To characterize steady state equilibrium, the first step is again to derive the worst case steady
state, that is, the steady state if x̂t = x∗ = x̂ (1 − ŝ) and Yt = Y ∗ , where the worst case output
reflects low payoffs on all trees including bank trees and active trader trees. The bank equations
(A.10)-(A.14) are unchanged, so the bank ratios (λ, κ) still lie on the liquidity-management curve
described by (A.25). The steady state liquidity benefit, and money share as well as the price of
trees held by active traders satisfy
∗
iL = µ̂∗ (1 + γ̂) ,
x̂ (1 − ŝ)
q̂ ∗ = ,
δ + µ̂∗
q̂ ∗
α∗ = ∗ .
q̂ + (1 + ν̂) C ∗

To describe the capital-structure curve, we first write the cost of bank customers’ liquidity and
the active trader money share as functions of the bank ratios λ and κ:
Z λ̄  
L ∗ ∗ 0 ∗ ∗ 0 ∗ ∗
ı̃ (λ , κ ) := −c (κ ) + (1 + ν) (c (κ ) − c (κ ) (κ − 1)) λ̃dG λ̃ ,
λ∗
x̂ (1 − s)
α̃ (λ∗ , κ∗ ) := .
x̂ (1 − s) + C∗ (1 + ν̂) (δ + ı̃L (λ∗ , κ∗ ))
The function ı̃L is decreasing in both arguments: higher liquidity or collateral ratios lower bank
customers’ cost of liquidity. As a result, the active trader money share is increasing in both λ∗ and
κ∗ . In the region of (λ, κ)-plane where reserves are abundant both functions depend on λ only via
a negligible effect on C ∗ .
We find the worst case bank ratios from the intersection of the liquidity-management curve and
the new capital-structure curve described by
b

∗
v̄
eg λ (1 + B g /M ) 1+γ + ρv̄ xδ−c
(1−s) 1 ∗ ∗
0 (κ) C ∗ (1 − α̃ (λ , κ )) +
v̄
1+γ
f (λ∗ )
κ = v̄ . (A.31)
1+g+ 1+γ
f (λ∗ )

The difference to (18) is the presence of the factor 1 − α in the numerator. In the region where
reserves are abundant, ı̃L is independent of λ and the curve is upward sloping in the (λ, κ)-plane
without further assumptions. With scarce reserves, the presence of active traders reduces the slope
of the curve. To guarantee an upward slope, we need the share of nominal assets sufficiently large
or the payoff of active traders small enough relative to output.
Actual steady state
The second step in the characterization of equilibrium is to find the transition path from the
actual to the worst case steady state. We conjecture again that this transition takes only one period,
so that λ = λ∗ and α = α∗ . The bank block of the difference equations has not changed and delivers
actual steady state i, κ and iL . To derive the value of bank trees, we apply the same argument as
in Section A.7 but use the new equation for inflation – the second equation in (A.30) – to obtain
C λ 1 − α∗
q = q∗ .
C ∗ λ∗ 1 − α

12
 Substituting into the first equation in (A.30), the actual steady state ratios λ and α satisfy
b ∗
eg λ (1 + B g /M ) + ρv̄ xδ−c
(1−s) 1−α
0 (κ) C ∗
λ
λ∗
+ v̄
1+γ
f (λ)
κ= .
1 + g λλ∗ + v̄
1+γ
f (λ)

The equation is satisfied if λ = λ∗ since we have α∗ = α̃ (λ∗ , κ∗ ) and the equation is otherwise
identical to (A.31).
It remains to check the second equation in (A.28) as well as (A.29). The actual steady state
value of active trader trees follows from (A.29) as

α∗
q̂ = (1 + ν̂) C.
1 − α∗
Given this value, we can find the actual steady state multiplier µ̂ to satisfy (A.28). We have shown
that if the initial conditions are given by the worst case steady value α∗ and λ∗ and there is a
transitory shock that increases tree payoffs, agents respond by choosing again worst case steady
state α and λ.
We summarize the actual steady state for the economy with active traders as follows. Actual
inflation is given by the growth rate of nominal government liabilities π = g. Since κ = κ∗ and
λ = λ∗ , the actual steady state bank ratios are determined from the intersection of the liquidity
management and capital-structure curves (A.25) and (A.31). The value of active trader trees and
the evolution of the nominal price level are given by
C Y x̂
q̂ = q̂ ∗
∗
= (1 − ŝ) ∗ ,
C Y δ + µ̂∗
1 − α̃ (λ, κ) 1 + v Mt + Btg
Pt = .
λ 1 + bt Y

13
Comments by Sukudhew Singh1

Central banks can buy financial assets, push large amounts of liquidity into the
financial system, dampen yields across the yield curve but, at the end of the day, the
banking system can have its own ideas about the creation of inside money. More
importantly, none of these policies ensure that banks will lend to sectors that support
sustainable growth of the economy. How much credit is created and where that
lending is directed is largely a prerogative of the financial system. Distorted incentives
often lead to distorted lending, which often leads to a financial crisis. It is important
to keep this in mind when we look at effectiveness of extraordinary policy measures
like quantitative easing (QE).

Rising imbalances and narrowing policy space

Unconventional policies have indeed been hugely successful in boosting prices of all
types of financial asset by pushing investors into riskier assets in a search of yield and
by central banks buying and taking out of the markets large amounts of safe assets.
Central bank assurance of a prolonged period of easy money have given the markets
confidence that asset prices will continue to rise.
But as investors have become increasingly desperate for a decent return on their
funds, the risk-taking may have gone in unanticipated directions and exceeded the
expectations of central banks. From what we can see, negative interest rates and
cheap credit have led to significant flows of savings and leverage into properties and
housing. Equities and bond markets have reached levels where even market
participants are showing signs of nervousness. The search for yield has pushed
investors into risky products such as leveraged loans and junk bonds issued by
already highly indebted companies.
Only last week, the Wall Street Journal 2 carried an article, based on work by S&P
Global Market Intelligence, which noted that almost 30% of risky leveraged loans in
the United States in 2007 were “covenant lite”. By 2016, that number had increased
to 75%. In Europe, that number was just under 8% in 2007, rising to 60% in 2016.
Over the last three to four years, there have been increasing signs of such
investor overstretching for yield. Central banks need to take serious notice of these
developments. Otherwise, their unconventional monetary policies are in serious risk
of leaving behind a deeply tarnished legacy.
This is particularly important when we are, for the first time since the financial
crisis, seeing more sustained and synchronised growth across the world. Almost a
decade of financial repression in much of the developed world and the consequent
imbalances could yet trip the global economy again. The imbalances are now global;
credit and asset prices have increased across the world. Debt levels are higher and

1
Central Bank of Malaysia.
2
15 June 2017, “Yield Hunt Drives Loan Buyers Crazy”.

WP734 Payments, credit and asset prices 3

the policy space has narrowed significantly in many countries since the onset of the
financial crisis.

Small open economies and the tyranny of global finance

From the perspective of a small open economy like my own, the tyranny of global
finance is that only a few currencies can be reserve currencies, and when the world is
flooded with those currencies, there are unhappy consequences.
In the post-crisis period, any illusion of independence of monetary policy in small
open economies has now largely disappeared. With a globally integrated financial
system, you can only fully control your interest rates if you do not care at all about
your exchange rate. And as the post-crisis experience has shown, even the developed
countries, including the reserve currency economies, do very much care about their
exchange rates.
It is for this reason that when you look at the small open economies in Asia, most
central banks – even the inflation targeting ones, once you get beyond the rituals of
inflation targeting – we are all doing essentially the same things, including our
reliance on a multiplicity of tools because large external flows make it difficult to rely
on interest rates alone.
In Malaysia, after the Asian financial crisis, we bought into the conventional
wisdom that deepening our financial system would allow us to better manage these
capital flows. The reality has been that, with deeper and more open financial systems,
you also tend to attract more capital flows. Deeper financial systems do provide a
greater capacity to intermediate these flows, but it is not a capacity without limits,
and it comes at the cost of greater volatility in the exchange rate. It is no coincidence
that the Malaysian ringgit has been one of the most volatile currencies in the region
after the crisis. So, the irony is that, with deeper financial systems, you may need to
hold even larger foreign exchange reserves to provide stability.

Some observations and questions on efficacy of

unconventional monetary policies

Having not participated in the extreme monetary policies, but being nevertheless
affected by them, let me mention a number of observations and questions about their
efficacy.
First, despite the labelling of unconventional monetary policy, the monetary
frameworks employed by most central banks have remained essentially the same as
those that spawned the financial crisis. That being the case, how do we ensure that
we do not repeat the same mistakes again?
Second, a related issue has to do with the fact that, while too high inflation is a
monetary phenomenon, is it also necessarily the case that too low inflation is also a
monetary phenomenon? Despite often noting the role of structural reforms and fiscal
policy, the aggressive monetary policy response by the major central banks seems to
indicate that there was a strong belief that low inflation was indeed amenable to a

4 WP734 Payments, credit and asset prices

monetary cure. However, even after almost a decade of strenuous efforts, central
banks are still having trouble achieving their desired inflation rates.
Third, as a matter of strategy, how much liquidity does an economy need? I have
always thought of liquidity as a lubricant. When the economy is not running smoothly,
some additional lubricant may be helpful. But like a car engine, is it the case that
beyond a certain point, adding more lubricant would make the economy run faster
or smoother. It does not work for the car engine, should it work for the economy?
Particularly, when you understand that an economy could be running badly for many
reasons, and adding additional liquidity may not only not solve the underlying
problems but may instead create additional ones.
Carrying the car analogy a bit further, if you look at the monetary policy
speedometer, there is a red line. It is known to us as the zero lower bound on nominal
interest rates. The interpretation of that red line in the post-crisis period has been to
treat it as a target, something to be achieved, breached or circumvented. I believe
that it should be seen as a warning. That once interest rates approach these levels,
central banks should exercise great care in pressing the monetary accelerator further,
for you risk damaging the long term performance of the economy.
I sense that there is now a growing realisation among central banks that once
you go beyond a certain interest rate threshold, the gains from additional cuts in
interest rates tend to get smaller and the costs tend to get larger.
Fourth, monetary policy sets the baseline conditions for risk-taking in the
economy. Extended periods of low interest rates encourage risky behaviour across
the system — with risks popping up in different parts of the economy. Managing
these risks would be difficult and could end up being the central banking equivalent
of the “Whack-A-Mole” game. There has been much discussion about whether
monetary policy should be “leaning against the wind”. I believe that the issue is even
more fundamental than that. Monetary policy should not be actively creating financial
stability risks in the first place, no matter what the neutral rate is saying.
Here, institutions like the IMF have not been particularly helpful. One day they
are cheer-leading central banks to greater heights of monetary easing, and the next
day, they are highlighting concerns about global asset prices. You cannot have it both
ways – the two issues are related. Spiking asset prices are at the core of monetary
strategies such as QE.
Fifth, it would appear that once you adopt extreme monetary policies, it becomes
difficult to back out. It is like a monetary quicksand – easy to jump into but difficult
to get out of. The reason is that central banks have to weave a narrative to justify their
extreme policy measures and those narratives tend to trap central banks when they
need to reverse. You need the backing of really strong data to extricate yourself
without losing credibility. A related reason is that, at such low rates, reversal aversion
is strong and favours the status quo. That “fear factor” is accentuated by the
realisation that unwinding the extreme policy measures in a manner that does not
disrupt economic and financial activity is going to be highly challenging. As a
consequence, low interest rates tend to stay around far too long – long after the
original motivation is gone.
Sixth, central bank communications and tools such as forward guidance are
intended to enhance the effectiveness of monetary policy. However, these
communications could mean different things to different economic agents. For
instance, saying that you are going to maintain low interest rates for an extended
period could be perceived by financial markets as a sign of good times ahead, but be

WP734 Payments, credit and asset prices 3

seen by real investors and businesses as a worrisome diagnosis that the economy is
going to be very sick for an extended period. This divergent messaging may have
contributed to the outcomes such as the one of having significant financial
investment and only modest real investment.
A final concluding point, the common understanding is that monetary policy
cannot have a long-term effect on economic activity and employment. However,
looking at the mountain of debt and financial excesses that have gotten even higher
since the crisis, I believe that we need to consider the possibility that the cumulative
impact of repeated cycles of countercyclical monetary policy that has an inherent bias
toward easy monetary conditions could lead to the build-up of large imbalances that
are detrimental to the long-term growth prospects of the economy.
We can only create long periods of sustained growth if our policies are managed
to avoid creating large excesses. A policy strategy of recovering from one period of
excesses by creating new excesses is a recipe for transferring growth across time, not
for creating sustained growth over time.

4 WP734 Payments, credit and asset prices

Previous volumes in this series

733 A risk-centric model of demand recessions Ricardo J Caballero and Alp Simsek
July 2018 and macroprudential policy

732 The global factor in neutral policy rates: some Richard Clarida
July 2018 implications for exchange rates, monetary
policy, and policy coordination

731 The likelihood of effective lower bound Michal Franta

June 2018 events

730 U.S. monetary policy and fluctuations of Stefan Avdjiev and Galina Hale
June 2018 international bank lending

729 Has inflation targeting become less credible? Nathan Sussman and Osnat Zohar
June 2018

728 Accumulation of foreign currency reserves Rasmus Fatum and James Yetman
June 2018 and risk-taking

727 Recent RMB policy and currency co- Robert N McCauley and Chang Shu
June 2018 movements

726 Residential investment and economic activity: Emanuel Kohlscheen, Aaron

June 2018 evidence from the past five decades Mehrotra and Dubravko Mihaljek

725 Identifying oil price shocks and their Takuji Fueki , Hiroka Higashi ,
May 2018 consequences: the role of expectations in the Naoto Higashio , Jouchi Nakajima,
crude oil market Shinsuke Ohyama and Yoichiro
Tamanyu

724 Do small bank deposits run more than large Dante B Canlas, Johnny Noe E
May 2018 ones? Three event studies of contagion and Ravalo and Eli M Remolona
financial inclusion

723 The cross-border credit channel and lending Andrew Filardo and Pierre Siklos
May 2018 standards surveys

722 The enduring link between demography and Mikael Juselius and Előd Takáts
May 2018 inflation

721 Effects of asset purchases and financial Richhild Moessner

May 2018 stability measures on term premia in the euro
area

720 Could a higher inflation target enhance José Dorich, Nicholas Labelle St‐
May 2018 macroeconomic stability? Pierre, Vadym Lepetyuk and Rhys R.
Mendes

All volumes are available on our website www.bis.org.