Nearly seven years have passed since the last recession ended in November 2001.That recession was characterized by an unwinding of excess business investment in the aftermath of a burst U.S. stock market bubble (see Lansing 2003a). During the early years of the recovery, an accommodative interest rate environment provided stimulus to the housing market. To keep initial monthly payments affordable for the large influx of new and often credit-impaired homebuyers, the lending industry marketed a range of "exotic" mortgage products, for example, loans requiring no down payment or documentation of income, monthly payments for interest-only or less, and adjustable rate mortgages with low introductory "teaser" rates that reset higher over time. House prices rose faster in areas where exotic mortgages were more prevalent (see Tal 2006), suggesting, ironically, that the new lending products may have actually harmed affordability by fueling the price run-up.

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. We revisit a traditional topic in monetary economics: the relationship between asset prices and monetary policy. We study a model in which money helps facilitate trade in decentralized markets, as in Lagos andWright (2005), and real assets are traded in an over-the-counter (OTC) market, as in Duffie, Gˆarleanu, and Pedersen (2005). Agents wish to hold liquid portfolios, but liquidity comes at a cost: inflation. The OTC market serves as a secondary asset market, in which agents can rebalance their positions depending on their liquidity needs. Hence, a contribution of our paper is to provide a micro-founded explanation of the assumption that different investors have different valuations for the same asset, which is the key for generating gains from trade in the Duffie et al framework. In equilibrium, assets can be priced higher than their fundamental value because they help agents avoid the inflation tax. Terms of use: Documents in Department of EconomicsOne Shields Avenue Davis, CA 95616 (530)752-0741 http://www.econ.ucdavis.edu/working_search.cfm Monetary Policy, Asset Prices, and Liquidity in Over-the-Counter Markets Athanasios GeromichalosUniversity of California -Davis Lucas Herrenbrueck University of California -DavisThis Version: September 2012 PRELIMINARY AND INCOMPLETE -PLEASE DO NOT CIRCULATE ABSTRACT ------------------------------------We revisit a traditional topic in monetary economics: the relationship between asset prices and monetary policy. We study a model in which money helps facilitate trade in decentralized markets, as in Lagos and Wright (2005), and real assets are traded in an over-the-counter (OTC) market, as in Duffie, Gârleanu, and Pedersen (2005). Agents wish to hold liquid portfolios, but liquidity comes at a cost: inflation. The OTC market serves as a secondary asset market, in which agents can rebalance their positions depending on their liquidity needs. Hence, a contribution of our paper is to provide a micro-founded explanation of the assumption that different investors have different valuations for the same asset, which is the key for generating gains from trade in the Duffie et al framework. In equilibrium, assets can be priced higher than their fundamental value because they help agents avoid the inflation tax.Keywords: monetary-search models, liquidity, asset prices, over-the-counter markets Email: ageromich@ucdavis.edu, herrenbrueck@ucdavis.edu.We are grateful to Jonathan Chiu, Miguel Molico, Guillaume Rocheteau, Christo...

A consistent empirical feature of bond yields is that term premia are, on average, positive. The majority of theoretical explanations for this observation have viewed the term premia through the lens of the consumption based capital asset pricing model. In contrast, we harken to an older empirical literature that attributes the term premium to the idea that short maturity bonds are inherently more liquid. The goal of this paper is to provide a theoretical justification of this concept. To that end, we employ a monetary‐search model extended to include assets of different maturities. Short term assets mature in time to take advantage of random consumption opportunities. Long term assets cannot be used directly to purchase consumption, but agents may liquidate them in a secondary asset market characterized by search and bargaining frictions. Our model delivers three results that are consistent with empirical facts. First, long term assets have higher rates of return in steady state to compensate agents for their relative lack of liquidity. Second, since the difference in the yield of short and long term assets reflects asset market frictions, our model predicts a steeper yield curve for assets that trade in less liquid secondary markets. Third, our model predicts that freshly issued (“on‐the‐run”) assets will sell at higher prices than previously issued (“off‐the‐run”) assets that mature in nearby dates, because sellers of the latter have a more urgent need for liquidity.

We study optimal portfolio choice in a two-country model where assets represent claims on future consumption and facilitate trade in markets with imperfect credit. Assuming that foreign assets trade at a cost, agents hold relatively more domestic assets. Consequently, agents have larger claims to domestic over foreign consumption. Moreover, foreign assets turn over faster than domestic assets because the former have desirable liquidity properties, but represent inferior saving tools. Our mechanism offers an answer to a long-standing puzzle in international finance: a positive relationship between consumption and asset home bias coupled with higher turnover rates of foreign over domestic assets.

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. I consider a model of directed search in which strategic sellers advertise general trading mechanisms. A mechanism determines the number of buyers that will get served and the side payments as a function of ex post realized demand. After observing these advertisements buyers simultaneously visit exactly one seller. Each buyer's expected utility depends on the visiting decisions of other buyers. This dependence becomes especially interesting since the buyers cannot coordinate their visiting strategies. Despite the presence of strategic interaction among the sellers all symmetric equilibria are constrained efficient but not payoff equivalent. Therefore, authorities should intervene in this type of market to redistribute surplus and not to improve efficiency. As markets grow infinitely large all equilibria yield the same profit. For the large market case I provide conditions under which only a very simple class of mechanisms is posted in equilibrium. Terms of use: Documents in Department of EconomicsOne Abstract I consider a model of directed search in which strategic sellers advertise general trading mechanisms. A mechanism determines the number of buyers that will get served and the side payments as a function of ex post realized demand. After observing these advertisements buyers simultaneously visit exactly one seller. Each buyer's expected utility depends on the visiting decisions of other buyers. This dependence becomes especially interesting since the buyers cannot coordinate their visiting strategies. Despite the presence of strategic interaction among the sellers all symmetric equilibria are constrained efficient but not payoff equivalent. Therefore, authorities should intervene in this type of market to redistribute surplus and not to improve efficiency. As markets grow infinitely large all equilibria yield the same profit. For the large market case I provide conditions under which only a very simple class of mechanisms is posted in equilibrium.