A Model of Money and Credit, with Application to the Credit Card Debt Puzzle
用货币经济学解释为何人们同时持有高息信用卡债务和低息银行存款，构建了一个货币与信贷共存的简洁模型，为理解消费债务提供新视角。
Many individuals simultaneously have significant credit card debt and money in the bank. The credit card debt puzzle is as follows: given high interest rates on credit cards and low rates on bank accounts, why not pay down debt? While some economists go to elaborate lengths to explain this, we argue it is a special case of the rate of return dominance puzzle from monetary economics. We extend standard monetary theory to incorporate consumer debt, which is interesting in its own right since developing models where money and credit coexist is a long-standing challenge. Our model is quite tractable—for example, it readily yields nice existence and characterization results—and helps put into context recent discussions of consumer debt. Copyright 2008, Wiley-Blackwell.