This paper surveys the growing literature on payments. We begin by presenting a simple model that illustrates the essential function of payments and how this may be implemented through various arrangements. We show how the basic models of payments have been used to address a variety of microeconomic and macroeconomic policy issues. We then discuss the links between payments economics and other fields, including monetary theory, corporate finance, and industrial organization. We conclude with an overview of the empirical literature and directions for future research.

Increased awareness of the importance of non-bank financial infrastructures has brought increased concern about the potential for bailouts and the resultant moral hazard problem. This paper examines the question with regard to derivatives central counterparties. We consider the layers of protection that derivatives central clearing parties (CCPs) have established in the absence of an expectation of regulatory rescue. We then provide a model of the tension between the desire for ex post rescue of a systemically important financial infrastructure and the desire to maintain ex ante discipline on the infrastructure. The model illustrates the factors that should lead to relaxation or tightening of the financial regulator's discretion for rescue. We consider examples of failures of derivatives CCPs in order to highlight the importance of these considerations.

In this article, we consider the relative merits of net versus gross settlement of interbank payments. Net settlement economizes on the costs of holding non-interest-bearing reserves, but increases moral hazard problems. The "put option" value of default under net settlement can also distort banks' investment incentives. Absent these distortions, net settlement dominates gross, although the optimal net settlement scheme may involve a positive probability of default.

This paper studies rehypothecation, a practice in which financial institutions re-pledge collateral pledged to them by their clients. Rehypothecation enhances provision of funding liquidity to the economy, but it also incurs deadweight cost by misallocating the asset among the agents when counterparties fail. We examine the possibility of a conflict between the intermediary and its borrower on rehypothecation arrangements. The direction of this conflict depends on haircuts of the contract between them: if the contract involves over-collateralization, there tends to be an excessive use of rehypothecation, and if the contract involves under-collateralization, there tends to be an insufficient use of rehypothecation. This offers an empirical prediction of a link between the size of haircut in collateralized financial contracts, borrower information, and the likelihood of rehypothecation.

We propose a theory of corporate liquidity management in which signaling through illiquidity is cheaper than signaling through “skin in the game.” This causes ex post liquidation of worthy projects even when there are enough aggregate resources available for their continuation. We examine the policy remedies for this distortion and consider their consequences for the supply of liquidity, interest rate policy, and subsidies.

This paper studies the efficient agreements about the dependence of workers' earnings on employment, when the employment level is controlled by firms.The firms' .superiorinformation about profitability conditions is responsible for this form of contract governance.Under plausible assumptions, such aj^reements will cause employment to diverge from efficiency as a byproduct of their attempt to mitigate risk.ll is shown that, if leisure is a normal good and firms are risk-neutral, employment is always ahoue the efficient level.Such a one-period implicit contracting model cannot, therefore, be used to "explain" unemployment as a rational byproduct of risk sharing between workers and a risk-neutral firm under conditions of asymmetric information.

IN HIS SURVEY ON RATIONAL EXPECTATIONS, R. Shiller indicates that the difficulty of obtaining explicit solutions for linear difference models under rational expectations may have hindered their use [14, p. 27]. The present paper attempts to remedy that problem by giving the explicit solution for an important subclass of the model Shiller refers to as the general linear difference model. Section 1 presents the form of the model for which the solution is derived and shows how particular models can be put in this form. Section 2 gives the solution together with the conditions for existence and uniqueness. 1. THE MODEL The model is given by (la), (lb), and (1c) as follows:

This paper presents a strategic theory of contract renegotiation. In this theory, suboptimal contracts are put in place initially to protect one party against undesirable a ctions by another party and are renegotiated once the danger is past. The authors develop a model to establish the cases in which simple contracts cannot achieve desirable outcomes, so that only a complicated contract or renegotiation will serve. Unlike most previous accounts of contract renegotiation, this theory does not rely on exogenous uncertainty to motivate renegotiation.