The paper establishes the following: First, money is neutral even if there is a non-zero stock of non-monetary nominal public debt, because the government adjusts real taxes to satisfy its intertemporal budget constraint. Second, Woodford's fiscal theory of the price level, according to which...

The paper analyses the role of fiscal policy in the restoration of internal and external macroeconomic equilibrium and in achieving structural adjustment i.e. major changes in the patterns of sectoral and intertemporal resource allocation. The focus is on developing and new industrial countries...

This paper takes a systematic look at the portfolio choice problem faced by Investment Banks or Funds investing in transition economies. We relate the performance of projects in the transition economies to the broader macroeconomic and international environment, which affect the project through...

Monetary theory and policy are part of intertemporal public finance. The lecture reviews some interesting recent developments. The two ghosts are the venerable liquidity trap and the Pigou effect or real balance effect. The eccentricities are negative nominal interest rates and the helicopter...

The paper considers three methods for eliminating the zero lower bound on nominal interest rates and thus for restoring symmetry to domain over which the central bank can vary its policy rate. They are: (1) abolishing currency (which would also be a useful crime-fighting measure); (2) paying...

A fall in house prices due to a change in fundamental value redistributes wealth from those long housing (for whom the fundamental value of the house they own exceeds the present discounted value of their planned future consumption of housing services) to those short housing. In a representative...

Governments through the ages have appropriated real resources through the monopoly of the 'coinage'. In modern fiat money economies, the monopoly of the issue of legal tender is generally assigned to an agency of the state, the Central Bank, which may have varying degrees of operational and...

The paper discusses some fundamental problems in monetary economics associated with the determination and role of the numeraire. The issues are introduced by formalising a proposal, attributed to Eisler, to remove the zero lower bound on nominal interest rates by unbundling the numeraire and...

After an absence of almost half a century, the spectre of deflation is once again haunting the corridors of central banks and finance ministries in the industrial world. While preventing or combating deflation poses some unique difficulties not present in preventing or combating inflation,...