Jonathan Chiu is a Principal Researcher in the Funds Management and Banking Department (FBD). His main research interests concern monetary theory, payments, banking and financial infrastructures. Specific topics include distributive effects of monetary policy, and asset market freezes and recoveries. Jonathan received his PhD in economics from the University of Western Ontario.
This paper studies the welfare effects of different credit arrangements and how these effects depend on the trading mechanism and inflation. In a competitive market, a deviation from the Friedman rule is always sub-optimal. Moreover, credit arrangements can be welfare-reducing, because increased consumption by credit users will drive up the price level so that money users have to reduce consumption when facing a binding liquidity restraint.
: Credit and credit aggregates; Payment clearing and settlement systemsWe study the trading dynamics in an asset market where the quality of assets is private information of the owner and finding a counterparty takes time. When trading of a financial asset ceases in equilibrium as a response to an adverse shock to asset quality, a large player can resurrect the market by buying up lemons which involves assuming financial losses.
: Financial markets; Financial stabilityCentral banks play a pivotal role in well-functioning payments systems by providing liquidity via collateralized lending. This article discusses the role of collateral and haircut policy in central bank lending, as well as the distinguishing features of the central bank’s policy relative to private sector practices. It presents a model that explicitly incorporates the unique role of central banks in the payments system and argues that central banks must consider how their haircut policies affect the relative price and liquidity of assets, the market’s asset allocation, and the likelihood of participants to default. Furthermore, under extraordinary circumstances, there is a rationale for the central bank to temporarily reduce haircuts or broaden the list of eligible collateral to mitigate the shortage of liquidity in the market.
: Central bank research; Financial stability; Payment clearing and settlement systemsThe generation and implementation of ideas, or knowledge, is crucial for economic performance. We study this process in a model of endogenous growth with frictions.
: Economic models; Potential output; ProductivityWe present a model of central bank collateralized lending to study the optimal choice of the haircut policy. We show that a lending facility provides a bundle of two types of insurance: insurance against liquidity risk as well as insurance against downside risk of the collateral.
: Central bank research; Financial services; Financial system regulation and policies; Monetary policy implementation; Payment clearing and settlement systemsThis paper develops a search-theoretic model to study the interaction between banking and monetary policy and how this interaction affects the allocation and welfare. Regarding how banking affects the welfare costs of inflation: First, we find that, with banking, inflation generates smaller welfare costs. Second, we show that, lowering inflation improves welfare not just by [...]
: Monetary policy frameworkThis paper studies the welfare costs and the redistributive effects of inflation in the presence of idiosyncratic liquidity risk, in a micro-founded search-theoretical monetary model. We calibrate the model to match the empirical aggregate money demand and the distribution of money holdings across households, and study the effects of inflation under the implied degree of [...]
: Inflation: costs and benefits; Monetary policy frameworkThis paper develops a model of settlement system to study the endogenous structure of settlement networks, and the welfare consequences of clearing agent failure. The equilibrium degree of tiering is endogenously determined by the cost structure and the information structure. The degree of tiering is decreasing in the fixed cost of operating the second-tier network [...]
: Payment clearing and settlement systemsThis paper studies the effects of monetary policy in an inventory theoretic model of money demand. In this model, agents keep inventories of money, despite the fact that money is dominated in rate of return by interest bearing assets, because they must pay a fixed cost to transfer funds between the asset market and the goods market.
: Monetary policy framework; Transmission of monetary policyThis paper studies the long run welfare costs of inflation in a micro-founded model with trading frictions and costly liquidity management.
: Inflation: costs and benefitsPayments systems play a fundamental role in an economy by providing the mechanisms through which payments arising from transactions can be settled. The existing literature on the economics of payments systems is large but loosely organized, in that each model uses a distinct set-up and sometimes a distinct equilibrium concept.
: Payment clearing and settlement systems
