Money, Credit, and Deposit Insurance

9308819威廉姆森 本研究的主要目的是增进对政府干预货币和金融事务的理解。 该研究包括三个项目。 第一个是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，宏观经济学忽略了这一主题，因为宏观经济学家将大部分注意力集中在“真实的”或供应方因素在商业周期行为中的作用上。 本项目将回答以下问题。 相对于货币政策不确定性的损失，长期通货膨胀造成的福利损失有多大？ 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，那么政策如何得到改善？ 第二个项目将研究政府提供的存款保险的作用和存款保险计划的最佳设计。 最近，人们痛苦地发现，美国的存款保险制度出了严重的问题，而经济学家对提供存款保险却出奇地没有什么可说的。 模型框架能够解释为什么美国存款保险在20世纪80年代惨败之前的很长一段时间内表现良好，并展示了如何改进该系统。 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”在将联邦行为的变化转化为真实的活动方面发挥了重要作用，但对于中央银行行为影响信贷分配的机制，人们几乎没有达成共识。 这里使用的建模框架建立在信息经济学的最新进展。 当货币政策与金融监管相互作用，产生不良的信贷分配时，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.