Money in Bilateral Trade

In this paper we compare production inefficiencies in bilateral meetings generated by two types of trading frictions: double-coincidence frictions and information frictions. For both types of frictions, money enlarges the sets of incentive-feasible allocations relative to barter. In environments with double-coincidence frictions, the first-best allocation is incentive-feasible if the real stock of money is sufficiently high. In contrast, in environements with information frictions, the first-best allocation is never incentivefeasible regardless of the real stock of money. These results highlight a fundamental difference between these two types of frictions. While money can eliminate the production inefficiencies that arise in bilateral meetings with a double-coincidence problem, it can only ameliorate but not eliminate the inefficiencies that are due to private information.