Monetary policy leaves a fiscal footprint. In some circumstances, relieving the fiscal burden becomes the main goal of policy, and inflation control is subordinate. This article notes that the same is true of macroprudential policy, and it characterizes the size and sign of its fiscal footprint,...

I calculate unemployment multipliers of fiscal consolidation policies in a standard, closed-economy New Keynesian framework with search and matching frictions, and, as an innovation, in the presence of sectoral heterogeneity. Family and non-family firms behave differently in the labor market and...

We study a production economy with multiple sectors financed by issuing securities to agents who face capital constraints. Binding capital constraints propagate business cycles, and a reduction of the interest rate can increase the required return of high-haircut assets since it can increase the...

When is it optimal for a government to default on its legal repayment obligations? We answer this question for a small open economy with domestic production risk in which contracting frictions make it optimal for the government to finance itself by issuing non-contingent debt. We show that...

In this paper, we assess the impact of major German structural reforms from 1999 to 2008 on key macroeconomic variables. By many, these reforms, especially the Hartz reforms on the labor market, are considered to be the root of observed imbalances in the Euro Area. Our simulations within a...

Using an estimated large-scale New-Keynesian model, we assess welfare and business cycle consequences of a fiscal union within EMU. We differentiate between three different scenarios: public revenue equalisation, tax harmonisation and a centralised fiscal authority. Relative to the status quo,...

The recent boom and bust in commodity prices has raised concerns about the impact of volatile commodity prices on Latin American countries’ fiscal positions. Using a novel quarterly dataset─ which includes unique country specific commodity price indices and a comprehensive measure of public...

The present paper treats the issue of economic foundations, on which political power rests, and the specific problem of public debt in the developed countries. Starting from the general question: “Why do rich governments borrow so much?” the paper develops a model of political power based on...

This paper is based on presentation given at the June 2011 Conference of the Centre for Growth and Business Cycle Research at the University of Manchester. It reviews key features of the 2007-08 financial crisis, the subsequent 'great recession' and the European public debt problems; in the...

This survey outlines the general lessons of the recent literature on imperfectly competitive macroeconomies for the theory of monetary and fiscal policy. A general framework is presented which encompasses most of the existing literature. Although money is of itself neutral in these models, the...