The paper considers the response of a small, open dependent economy to a variety of fiscal and financial shocks as well as the influence of alternative budget balancing rules on the response of the system to such external shocks as a change in the world interest rate. The approach allows for...

This paper examines three sources of the fluctuations in real interest rates during the past three decades: changes in budget deficits, changes in tax rules, and changes in monetary policy. The evidence indicates that budget deficits and monetary policy have had a strong influence on the level...

This paper emphasizes the importance of the interaction between tax rules and the management of monetary policy. The monetary authorities' failure to recognize the implications of the tax structure has caused them to underestimate just how expansionary monetary policy has been. Moreover, because...

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...

This paper explains why the debt reduction motive for countries that are subject to borrowing constraints and a volatile environment is greater than for those with a more stable environment and relatively better access to the financial markets. In particular, it shows that the possibility of...

This paper analyzes the financial policies pursued in the major industrial countries under the flexible exchange rate regime, and links misalignments in policies and their mixes to exchange rate variations among the major currencies. A number of indicators note that misalignments in fiscal...

The creation of the euro and the European Central Bank is a remarkable and unprecedented event in economic and political history: creating a supranational central bank and leaving eleven countries without national currencies of their own. The experience of the first year confirms that one size...

Borrowing from the experience of environmental markets, this paper proposes a system of tradable deficit permits as an efficient mechanism for implementing fiscal constraints in the European Monetary Union: having chosen an aggregate target for the Union and an initial distribution of permits,...