Divisible Money in an Economy with Villages

This paper provides a tractable search model with divisible money that encompasses the two frameworks currently used in the literature. In the model, individuals belong to many villages. Inside a village, individuals are not altruistic as in a representative household, but they share information so financial contracts are feasible. Money is essential in the model to facilitate trade with individuals outside the village. The framework proposed by Lagos and Wright (2002) arises as a special case if some goods trade in competitive markets while others trade in search markets, and preferences are quasi-linear. The framework proposed by Shi (1997) arises as a special case if individuals can insure trading risks inside the village. In general, if preferences are not quasi-linear and trading risks cannot be insured, the distribution of money holdings is non-degenerate and monetary transfers have distributional effects. However, neither quasi-linear preferences nor insurance of trading risks are necessary for tractability. Indeed, this paper advances a tractable benchmark with an endogenous frequency of shopping in which all buyers choose to carry the same amount of money even if preferences are not quasi-linear and trading risks cannot be insured