This working paper was written by Chao Gu (University of Missouri), Guido Menzio (New York University and NBER), Randall Wright (Zhejiang University, University of Wisconsin - Madison and NBER) and Yu Zhu (Bank of Canada).During the financial crisis, relatively centralized markets functioned...

We motivate and provide an overview to New Monetarist Economics. We then briefly describe the individual contributions to the Macroeconomics Dynamics special issues on money, credit and liquidity.

We study economies with multiple assets that are valued both for their return and liquidity. Exchange occurs in decentralized markets with frictions making a medium of exchange essential. Some assets are better suited for this role because they are more liquid - more likely to be accepted in...