Liquidity, transaction costs, and real activity

This paper studies the liquidity effect in a pecuniary transaction-cost model. To model the asymmetric impact of monetary injections, we consider two behavioral assumptions: sluggish money demand and sluggish firm investment. It is found that, under reasonable parameterization, the model is capable of generating a dominant liquidity effect. Our result suggests that, with alternative monetary specifications and behavioral assumptions, general equilibrium models are still useful for studying the liquidity effect at business cycle frequencies.