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This paper revisits the issue of the optimal exchange rate regime in a flexible price environment. The key innovation is that we analyze this question in the context of environments where only a fraction of agents participate in asset market transactions (i.e., asset markets are segmented). Under this friction, alternative exchange rate regimes have different implications for real allocations in the economy. In particular -- and contrary to standard results under sticky prices -- we show that flexible exchange rates are optimal under monetary shocks and fixed exchange rates are optimal under real shocks.

This paper examines the implications of segmented assets markets for the real and nominal effects of monetary policy. I develop a model, in which varieties of consumption bundles are purchased sequentially. Newly injected money thus disseminates slowly through the economy via second-round effects and induces a non-degenerate, long-lasting heterogeneity in wealth. As a result, the effective elasticity of substitution differs across households, affecting optimal markups chosen by producers. In line with empirical evidence, the model predicts a short-term inflation-output trade-off, a liquidity effect, countercyclical markups, and procyclical profits and wages after monetary shocks.

This 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. Unlike the exogenous segmentation models in the literature, the timings of money transfers are endogenous. By allowing agents to choose the timings of money transfers, the model endogenizes the degree of market segmentation as well as the magnitude of liquidity effects, price sluggishness and variability of velocity. First, I show that the endogenous segmentation model can generate the positive long run relationship between money growth and velocity in the data which the exogenous segmentation model fails to capture. Second, I show that the short run effects of money shocks in an exogenous segmentation model (such as the linear inflation response to money shock, the liquidity effect and the sluggish price adjustment) are not robust. In an endogenous segmentation model, the equilibrium response to money shocks is non-linear and non-monotonic. Moreover, for large money shocks, there is no liquidity effect and no sluggish price adjustment.

This paper examines how segmented asset markets can generate real and nominal effects of monetary policy. I develop a model, in which varieties of consumption bundles are purchased sequentially. Newly injected money thus disseminates slowly through the economy via second-round effects and induces a longer-lasting, non-degenerate wealth distribution. As a result, the demand elasticity differs across consumers, affecting optimal markups chosen by producers. The model predicts a short-term inflation-output trade-off, a liquidity effect, countercyclical markups, and procyclical wages and expenditure dispersion across consumers after monetary shocks. Including a modest degree of real or nominal wage rigidity yields responses that are also quantitatively in line with empirical evidence.

"This paper analyzes the effects of money injections on interest rates and exchange rates in a model in which agents must pay a Baumol-Tobin style fixed cost to exchange bonds and money. Asset markets are endogenously segmented because this fixed cost leads agents to trade bonds and money only infrequently. When the government injects money through an open market operation, only those agents that are currently trading absorb these injections. Through their impact on these agents' consumption, these money injections affect real interest rates and real exchange rates. We show that the model generates the observed negative relation between expected inflation and real interest rates. With moderate amounts of segmentation, the model also generates other observed features of the data: persistent liquidity effects in interest rates and volatile and persistent exchange rates. A standard model with no fixed costs can produce none of these features"--Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis web site

Abstract
This article proposes a novel mechanism by which changes in the distribution of money holdings have real aggregate effects. I develop a flexible-price model of segmented asset markets in which monetary policy influences the aggregate demand elasticity via heterogenous money holdings. Because varieties of consumption bundles are purchased sequentially, newly injected money disseminates slowly throughout the economy via second-round effects. The model predicts a short-term inflation-output trade-off, a liquidity effect, countercyclical markups, and pro-cyclical wages after monetary shocks. Among other correlations of financial variables, it also reproduces the empirical, negative relationship between changes in the money supply and markups.

This paper studies optimal monetary policy in a two-sector small open economy model under segmented asset markets and sticky prices. We solve the Ramsey problem under full commitment, and characterize the optimal monetary policy in a calibrated version of the model. The findings of the paper are threefold. First, the Ramsey solution mimics the allocations under flexible prices. Second, under the optimal policy the volatility of non-tradable inflation is close to zero. Third, stabilizing nontradable inflation is optimal regardless of the financial structure of the small open economy. Even for a