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Article
Fiat money and the value of binding portfolio constraints
Economic Theory (2011)
  • Mário Páscoa, New University of Lisbon
  • Myrian Petrassi, Central Bank of Brazil
  • Juan Pablo Torres-Martínez, University of Chile
Abstract
We establish necessary and sufficient conditions for the individual optimality of a consumption-portfolio plan in an infinite horizon economy where agents are uniformly impatient and fiat money is the only asset available for intertemporal transfers of wealth. Next, we show that fiat money has a positive equilibrium price if and only if for some agent the zero short sale constraint is binding and has a positive shadow price (now or in the future). As there is always an agent that is long, it follows that marginal rates of intertemporal substitution never coincide across agents. That is, monetary equilibria are never full Pareto efficient. We also give a counterexample illustrating the occurrence of monetary bubbles under incomplete markets in the absence of uniform impatience.
Keywords
  • Fiat money,
  • fundamental value of money,
  • uniform impatience
Disciplines
Publication Date
2011
Citation Information
Páscoa, M., M. Petrassi, and J. P. Torres-Martínez (2011): "Fiat money and the value of binding portfolio constraints," Economic Theory, volume 46, pages 189-209.