Money, Credit, and Deposit Insurance

9308819 Williamson本研究的主要目标是促进对政府干预货币和金融事务的理解。这项研究包括三个项目。第一部分将研究货币政策对美国经济福利和商业周期的定量重要性。在过去的10到15年里，这个话题在宏观经济学中被忽视了，因为宏观经济学家把大部分注意力集中在商业周期行为中“真实的”或供给侧因素的作用上。这个项目将回答以下问题。相对于货币政策不确定性带来的损失，长期通胀带来的福利损失有多大？联邦储备系统在1954-1992年期间的行为是否可以被描述为“接近”最优？如果最后一个问题的答案是否定的，那么政策将如何得到改善？第二个项目将研究政府提供存款保险的作用和存款保险计划的最佳设计。最近，一个令人痛苦的事实变得清晰起来：美国的存款保险制度出了严重的问题，而经济学家对存款保险的提供却出奇地少。该模型框架能够解释为什么美国存款保险在上世纪80年代惨遭失败之前，在很长一段时间内似乎运作良好，并展示该体系可以如何改进。第三个项目将研究货币政策与信贷之间的联系。最近的证据表明，“信贷紧缩”在将美联储行为的变化传递给实际活动方面发挥了重要作用，但对于央行行为影响信贷分配的机制，人们几乎没有达成一致。这里使用的建模框架建立在信息经济学的最新进展之上。当货币政策与金融监管相互作用，导致信贷分配不当时，信贷紧缩就会出现。

9308819 Williamson The main goal of this research is to advance understanding of government intervention in monetary and financial affairs. The research consists of three projects. The first will be a study of the quantitative importance of monetary policy for economic welfare and business cycles in the United States. This topic has been neglected in macroeconomics over the last ten to fifteen years, as macroeconomists focused much of their attention on the role of "real" or supply-side factors in business cycle behavior. This project will answer the following questions. What is the magnitude of the welfare loss from long-run inflation relative to the loss from uncertainty about monetary policy? Could the behavior of the Federal Reserve System over the period 1954-1992 be characterized as "close" to optimal? If the answer to the last question is no, then how might policy have been improved? The second project will study the role for government-provided deposit insurance and the optimal design of deposit insurance schemes. Recently, it has become painfully clear that something is dramatically wrong with the system of deposit insurance in the United States, while economists have had surprisingly little to say about the provision of deposit insurance. The modeling framework is capable of explaining why U.S. deposit insurance appeared to work well for a long period of time prior to failing miserably in the 1980s, and of showing how the system could be improved. The third project will examine the link between monetary policy and credit. Recent evidence suggests that "credit crunches" have played an important role in transmitting changes in Federal Reserve behavior to real activity, yet there is little agreement on the mechanism by which central bank actions affect the allocation of credit. The modeling framework to be used here builds on recent advances in information economics. Credit crunches arise as period where monetary policy can interact with f inancial regulations to produce an undesirable allocation of credit.