It is not common for an entire scholarly literature to be based on a fallacy, that is, 'on faulty reasoning; misleading or unsound argument'. The 'fiscal theory of the price level', recently re-developed by Woodford, Cochrane, Sims and others, is an example of a fatally flawed research...

This note comments on two central issues for fiscal policy design in the UK, highlighted in the recent Code for Fiscal Stability' proposed by the new Labour government. The first concerns the merits of the so-called golden rule of public sector investment' -- the proposition that, over the...

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...

Are generational accounts informative about the effect of the budget on the intergenerational distribution of resources and (when augmented with generation-specific propensities to consume out of life-time resources) on aggregate consumption and saving? The paper makes three points. First, the...

The USA is in the middle of the pack of industrial countries as regards the public debt-GOP and public deficit-GOP ratios. The period since 1980 is the only peace-time period outside the Great Depression to see a sustained increase in the debt-GOP ratio. The budgetary retrenchment planned by the...

In the overlapping generations model with uncertain lifetimes, efficient life insurance markets and no operative intergenerational gift and bequest motive, a positive birth rate has been shown to be sufficient and necessary for absence of debt neutrality: equilibrium prices and quantities are...

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...

For an economic system not to exhibit debt neutrality it must be true that changes in the time profile of lump-sum taxes redistributes resources between heterogeneous consumers. OLD models have age heterogeneity because of a positive birth rate. Unless a bequest motive or child-to-parent gift...

The paper uses a demand for seigniorage revenue and supply of seigniorage revenue approach to determine the consequences 0 cots in public spending for the rate of inflation. Monetary financing is viewed as the residual financing mode, with tax rates and pubic debt-GDP ratios held constant. In a...

The paper considers the analytical underpinnings of the scope for and limits of demand and supply management. After restating a general policy effectiveness result for New-Classical macroeconomic models, several non-Walrasan equilibrium models are considered. These use the efficiency wage...