Optimal fiscal and monetary policies in the face of rare disasters

This paper studies optimal fiscal and monetary policies in an economy exposed to large adverse shocks (rare disasters). We contrast optimal policies under commitment and discretion and identify several striking differences between these institutional environments. A government that can commit to its policy plans relies heavily on debt to smooth the adverse effects of large shocks over time. Lack of commitment seriously limits the government's ability to use debt as a shock absorber. Under discretion, an increase in debt leads to an increase in inflation expectations and therefore higher nominal interest rate distortions. Hence, the discretionary government keeps debt in close vicinity of its steady-state level, and the response of taxes, inflation, and interest rates to shocks is much more pronounced under discretion than under commitment. This is particularly relevant for large shocks and when the initial stock of government debt is already high at the time the shock occurs. We also argue that the adverse welfare effects of disasters are larger under discretion than under commitment, but these welfare differentials can be significantly reduced by making the discretionary government inflation averse.     

Optimal fiscal policy in a world liquidity trap

We construct a model of the international transmission of ‘liquidity trap’ shocks, and examine the case for international coordination of fiscal policy to respond to the liquidity trap. Integrated financial markets tend to propagate liquidity traps. In a global environment, fiscal policy may be effective in raising GDP when the economy is stuck in a liquidity trap, but it does so in a ‘beggar thy neighbor’ fashion; when one economy is in a liquidity trap, the cross country spillover effect of fiscal policy is negative. We examine the welfare optimizing policy response to a liquidity trap when countries coordinate on fiscal policy. Fiscal policy may be an effective tool in responding to a liquidity trap, although it is never optimal to use fiscal expansion sufficiently to fully eliminate a downturn. Moreover, there is little case for coordinated global fiscal expansion. For the most part, the country worst hit by a liquidity trap shock should use its own policies to respond, without much help from foreign policies.     

The identification of fiscal and monetary policy in a structural VAR

Good economic management depends on understanding shocks from monetary policy, fiscal policy and other sources affecting the economy and their subsequent interactions. This paper presents a new methodology to disentangle such shocks in a structural VAR framework. The method combines identification via sign restrictions, cointegration and traditional exclusion restrictions within a system which explicitly models stationary and non-stationary variables and accounts for both permanent and temporary shocks. The usefulness of the approach is demonstrated on a small open economy where policy makers are actively considering the interaction between monetary and fiscal policies.     

Inflation and the fiscal limit

We use a rational expectations framework to assess the implications of rising debt in an environment with a “fiscal limit”. The fiscal limit is defined as the point where the government no longer has the ability to finance higher debt levels by increasing taxes, so either an adjustment to fiscal spending or monetary policy must occur to stabilize debt. We give households a joint probability distribution over the various policy adjustments that may occur, as well as over the timing of when the fiscal limit is hit. One policy option that stabilizes debt is a passive monetary policy, which generates a burst of inflation that devalues the existing nominal debt stock. The probability of this outcome places upward pressure on inflation expectations and poses a substantial challenge to a central bank pursuing an inflation target. The distribution of outcomes for the path of future inflation has a fat right tail, revealing that only a small set of outcomes imply dire inflationary scenarios. Avoiding these scenarios, however, requires the fiscal authority to renege on some share of future promised transfers.     

Currency restrictions,government transaction policies and currency exchange

Summary. We study how currency restrictions and government transaction policies affect the values of fiat currencies in a two country, divisible good, search model. We show that these policies can generate equilibria where both currencies circulate as medium of exchange and where currency exchange occurs between citizens of different countries. Restrictions on the internal use of foreign currency can cause the domestic currency to be relatively more valuable to domestic agents while taxes on domestic currency create an incentive for home agents to hold foreign currency. We demonstrate that some policies increase prices and lower welfare while others do the reverse. Received: September 5, 2001; revised version: March 1, 2002     

货币政策与财政政策的区域产业结构调整效应比较

本文运用1978—2007年东、中、西部的面板数据分析。货币政策和财政政策是否具有区域产业结构调整效应结果显示:第一,财政政策具有产业结构调整效应,而货币政策的产业结构调整效应并不明显。第二,货币政策在对第一和第三产业的效应方面强于财政政策,而财政政策则在对第二产业的效应方面具有优势。第三,货币政策和财政政策对三次产业的效应都存在比较明显的区域效应。第四,在东部地区货币政策和财政政策对第一产业和第二产业的效应相差非常悬殊,而对第三产业的效应则集中在高位;在中部地区货币政策和财政政策对第二产业的效应集中在高位;在西部地区货币政策对第一产业的效应集中在高位,而财政政策对第一产业的效应则集中在低位。     

Monetary and fiscal policy interactions in a post Keynesian open-economy model

Using a post Keynesian model, this study aims to analyze the stabilizing role of fiscal and monetary policies in an open economy with a managed exchange rate regime. The real exchange rate is modeled as an endogenous variable and inflation explained using the conflicting claims approach. The dynamic properties of macroeconomic equilibrium are evaluated in different regimes of fiscal and monetary policies. The main result of this study suggests that the preferred policy regime is the one in which economic authorities are complementary and fiscal policy plays an explicitly active role. In this regime, the fiscal policy must commit to the target for the rate of capacity utilization and the monetary authority must commit to the inflation target.     

A simple search model of money with heterogeneous agents and partial acceptability

Summary. Simple search models have equilibria where some agents accept money and others do not. We argue such equilibria should not be taken seriously. This is unfortunate if one wants a model with partial acceptability. We introduce heterogeneous agents and show partial acceptability arises naturally and robustly. There can be multiple equilibria with different degrees of acceptability. Given the type of heterogeneity we allow, the model is simple: equilibria reduce to fixed points in [0,1]. We show that with other forms of heterogeneity equilibria are fixed points in set space, and there is no method to reduce this to a problem in R¹.Received: 4 September 2002, Revised: 23 September 2002JEL Classification Numbers: C78, E40.A. Shevchenko, R. Wright: We thank seminar participants at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Indiana University, Purdue University, University of Toronto, the 2002 Midwest Macroeconomics Conference at Vanderbilt University, and the 2001 Conference on Economic Dynamics at the University of Essex. The National Science Foundation and the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland provided financial support. Braz Ministerio de Camargo and Gabriel Camera provided some helpful suggestions. Correspondence to: R. Wright     

Stepping on a rake: The role of fiscal policy in the inflation of the 1970s

The inflation of the 1970s in the US is often discussed as if the only type of policy action that could have prevented the inflation were monetary policy actions and the only type of policy errors that might have induced the inflation were monetary policy errors. Yet fiscal policy underwent dramatic shifts in the 1970s and economic theory makes clear that in an environment of uncertainty about future fiscal policy, monetary policy instruments may lose potency or have perverse effects. This paper documents the vagaries of fiscal policy in this period and argues that people at the time must have been uncertain about fiscal policy's future course. It also lays out a theoretical framework for understanding the effects of fiscal uncertainties on monetary policy and shows that fiscal variables have predictive value in dynamic models, even if traditional monetary policy indicators are included in the system.     

Monetary and fiscal policy interactions in a New Keynesian model with capital accumulation and non-Ricardian consumers

The paper examines simple monetary and fiscal policy rules consistent with determinate equilibrium dynamics in the absence of Ricardian equivalence. Under this assumption, government debt turns into a relevant state variable which needs to be accounted for in the analysis of equilibrium dynamics. The key analytical finding is that without explicit reference to the level of government debt it is not possible to infer how strongly the monetary and fiscal instruments should be used to ensure determinate equilibrium dynamics. Specifically, we identify bifurcations associated with threshold values of steady-state debt, leading to qualitative changes in the local determinacy requirements.     

Rigid wage-setting and the effect of a supply shock,fiscal and monetary policies on Chinese economy by a CGE analysis

The purpose of this paper is to present a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model of the Chinese economy which includes rigid wage-setting and integration of real and financial sectors, and to apply it to a quantitative evaluation of the oil price changes and the fiscal and monetary policies. The policy simulation shows whether the wage rate is flexible or rigid is crucial for the evaluation of various policy measures. Furthermore, the fields of application of the model are extended from the industry-related problems to the macroscopic ones such as inflation, stabilization policies and so on.     

Capital inflows, fiscal discretion, and exchange rate policy

Many writers have argued for the benefits of a credible fixed exchange rate (a hard peg) as a commitment device in an open economy. But historically, fixed exchange rates have often been associated with large current account deficits and episodes of ‘over-borrowing’. This paper develops a model of capital inflows that are linked to the exchange rate regime because of endogenous fiscal policy. The key message of the paper is that a hard peg is undesirable in the absence of commitment in fiscal policy. In face of a credible fixed exchange rate, the fiscal authority subsidizes capital inflows. The economy will engage in inefficiently high international borrowing, and in welfare terms may end up worse off than under capital market autarky. To eliminate the incentive to subsidize borrowing, the monetary authority must follow a flexible exchange rate rule in which capital inflows lead to exchange rate appreciation. If fiscal policy must be financed by money creation rather than direct taxation, then a fixed exchange rate rule may cause both over-borrowing and a subsequent exchange rate crisis.     

Optimal simple rules for the conduct of monetary and fiscal policy

Stabilization policy involves joint monetary and fiscal rules. We develop a model enabling us to characterize systematic simple monetary and fiscal policy over the business cycle. We principally focus on the following question. What are the key properties of the joint simple rule governing the conduct of systematic stabilization policy? We find that conducting stabilization policy incorporates not only a set of monetary policy choices governed by the so-called ‘Taylor principle’ but also fiscal policy that gives considerable force to automatic stabilizers. Recent US and UK monetary and fiscal choices seem broadly consistent with this model. This result is found to be robust to a number of alternate modeling strategies.     

Optimal choice of monetary policy instruments under velocity and fiscal shocks

This paper, in the spirit of Poole [Poole, William, 1970. The Optimal Choice of Monetary Policy Instruments in a Simple Macro Model. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 84, 192–216.], studies how differently monetary and fiscal shocks influence the appropriate choice of the monetary policy regime. Velocity shocks are introduced by embedding a stochastic cash-in-advance constraint within the New Keynesian framework. In addition to optimal policy under discretion, three classic rules, interest rate targeting, monetary targeting, and the Taylor rule are ranked under both fiscal and velocity shocks. The non-stationarity of prices under the Taylor rule makes it inferior to the other rules under which prices are stationary. Monetary targeting, by stabilizing aggregate demand under fiscal shocks, outperforms interest rate targeting, while the latter provides a better insulation against velocity shocks. Monetary targeting (under fiscal shocks) and interest rate targeting (under velocity shocks) even outperform the optimal policy under discretion for sufficiently high intertemporal elasticities of consumption substitution.     

Fiscal deficits,monetary reform and inflation stabilization in romania

Developing countries have witnessed an increase in foreign bank participation during the last decade. Using bank level data for the period 1991–2001, we examine the influence of foreign banks on the financing of small firms in Tanzania. Despite dominating the banking sector, results suggest that the financing of small firms by foreign banks is insignificant compared to domestic banks. Clearly, there is a need for a new approach to policy that will encourage significant foreign bank lending to small firms.     

Rogoff revisited: The conservative central banker proposition under active fiscal policies

The paper re-examines Rogoff's [Rogoff, K., 1985. The Optimal Degree of Commitment to an Intermediate Monetary Target. Quarterly Journal of Economics 100, 1169–1189.] influential monetary policy result. It shows that responses of a conservative central banker and the resulting macroeconomic outcomes may be substantially different if interactions with (ambitious) fiscal policy are taken into account.     

An empirical evaluation of China’s monetary policies

This paper investigates the responsiveness of the Chinese government’s monetary policies in terms of the money supply and interest rates to economic conditions and the effectiveness of these policies in achieving the goals of stimulating economic growth and controlling inflation. We analyze the responsiveness and effectiveness by estimating the Taylor rule, the McCallum rule, and a vector autoregressive model using quarterly data in the period of 1992-2009. The results show that, overall, the monetary policy variables respond to economic growth and the inflation rate, but the magnitudes of the responses are much weaker than those observed in market economies. Money supply responded actively to both the inflation rate and the real output and had certain effects on the future inflation rates and real output. The official interest rates, on the other hand, responded passively to the inflation rate and did not respond to the real output. They do not have any effect on future inflation rates and real output either.     

Differences in measures of the fiscal multiplier and the reduced-form vector autoregression

The literature has recently asked whether the effects of fiscal policy vary with the state of the economy (Christiano, Eichenbaum, and Rebelo 2011; Rendahl 2014; Auerbach and Gorodnichenko 2012). We study this question in the context of vector autoregression (VAR) estimation. We show formally that, if (asymptotically) the parameters of the reduced-form VAR differ, then the dynamic effects of fiscal policy differ as well, generically and for any set of identification assumptions. Thus, in theory, the econometrician can detect these differences (either across time or space) generically just by relying on reduced-form VAR estimation.     

How to avoid the consequences of anticipated monetary policies

Summary. This paper analyzes how monetary policy in an overlapping generations model can be designed to avoid inflationary consequences of anticipated changes of monetary policies. Avoiding these inflationary consequences will require a once and for all increase (decrease) in monetary growth immediately before the policy switch takes place if the relative risk aversion is greater (less) than unity. If the relative risk aversion is greater than unity, the avoidance of inflationary consequences is also time-consistent. Moreover, a general monetary feedback rule ensures that the economy picks the steady state with the lowest inflation rate. Our results suggest that the difference between unanticipated and anticipated policy switches may not be as important as generally assumed, because the consequences of the latter can be neutralized. Received: September 19, 1995; revised version: July 27, 1998     

Monetary–fiscal policy interactions and fiscal stimulus

Increases in government spending trigger substitution effects—both inter- and intra-temporal—and a wealth effect. The ultimate impacts on the economy hinge on current and expected monetary and fiscal policy behavior. Studies that impose active monetary policy and passive fiscal policy typically find that government consumption crowds out private consumption: higher future taxes create a strong negative wealth effect, while the active monetary response increases the real interest rate. This paper estimates Markov-switching policy rules for the United States and finds that monetary and fiscal policies fluctuate between active and passive behavior. When the estimated joint policy process is imposed on a conventional new Keynesian model, government spending generates positive consumption multipliers in some policy regimes and in simulated data in which all policy regimes are realized. The paper reports the model's predictions of the macroeconomic impacts of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act's implied path for government spending under alternative monetary–fiscal policy combinations.