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Our current inflation stemmed from a fiscal shock. The Fed is slow to react. Why? Will the Fed's slow reaction spur more inflation? I write a simple model that encompasses the Fed's mild projections and its slow reaction, and traditional views that inflation will surge without swift rate rises....
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013210124
I construct a simple model with sticky prices and interest rate targets, closed by fiscal theory of the price level with long-term debt and fiscal and monetary policy rules. Fiscal surpluses rise following periods of deficit, to repay accumulated debt, but surpluses do not respond to arbitrary...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012479269
The textbook optimal policy response to an increase in government debt is simple--monetary policy should actively target inflation, and fiscal policy should smooth taxes while ensuring debt sustainability. Such policy prescriptions presuppose an ability to commit. Without that ability, the...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012479609
We estimate a model in which fiscal and monetary policy behavior arise from the optimizing behavior of distinct policy authorities, with potentially different welfare functions. Optimal time-consistent policy behavior fits U.S. time series at least as well as rules-based behavior. American...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012481395
Monetary policy decisions tend to be based on systematic analysis of alternative policy choices and their associated macroeconomic impacts: this is science. Fiscal policy choices, in contrast, spring from unsystematic speculation, grounded more in politics than economics: this is alchemy. In...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012462148
I use the valuation equation of government debt to understand fiscal and monetary policy in and following the great recession of 2008-2009, to think about fiscal pressures on US inflation, and what sequence of events might surround such an inflation. I emphasize that a fiscal inflation can come...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012462568
We develop a rational expectations framework to study the consequences of alternative means to resolve the "unfunded liabilities'' problem---unsustainable exponential growth in federal Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid spending with no plan to finance it. Resolution requires specifying a...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012462870
Slow moving demographics are aging populations around the world and pushing many countries into an extended period of heightened fiscal stress. In some countries, taxes alone cannot or likely will not fully fund projected pension and health care expenditures. If economic agents place sufficient...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012463135
monetary policy and passive fiscal policy typically find that government consumption crowds out private consumption: higher … Keynesian model, government spending generates positive consumption multipliers in some policy regimes and in simulated data in …
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012463517
The paper presents the fiscal theory of the price level in a variety of models, including endowment economies with lump-sum taxes and production economies with proportional income taxes. We offer a microeconomic perspective on the fiscal theory by computing a Slutsky-Hicks decomposition of the...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012467030