We identify the frontier between safe and unsafe assets and show how the growth rate of the economy and its fiscal capacity interact with differences of opinion amongst investors to determine the safe asset equilibrium. Multiple equilibria emerge in our set-up due to strategic complementarities across counterparties, and the safety of the bond depends on...

We explore the conditions under which a financial asset emerges as a global store of value and can co-exist with a pre-existing (incumbent) store of value. In our model the acceptability of an asset as a global store is driven by the issuing region’s financial development, growth rate, degree of capital liberalization, and by strategic...