The paper provides a formalisation of the monetary folk proposition that fiat base money is an asset of the holder but not a liability of the issuer. The issuance of irredeemable fiat base money can have pure fiscal effects on private demand. With irredeemable fiat base money, weak restrictions...

Two economies, represented by Diamond-type overlapping-generations models and differing only in their pure rates of time preference, are joined together. Capital formation, balance-of-payments behavior, and welfare are compared under autarky and openness. With a positive natural rate of growth,...

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...

We investigate how the ability of the government to depart from budget balance and issue debt expands the set of equilibria that can be supported using lump-sum tax-transfer instruments. We show how this depends on the restrictions that exist on the capacity to tax and make transfer payments,...

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...

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...

The paper considers the implications of the rational expectations - New Classical Macroeconomics revolution for the "rules versus discretion" debate. The following issues are covered 1) The ineffectiveness of anticipated stabilization policy, 2) Non-causal models and rational expectations, 3)...

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 investigates the robustness of the proposition that in stochastic models contingent or feddback rules dominate fiped or openloop rules. Four arguments in favour of fixed rules are considere`. 1) The presence of an incompetent op malevolent policy maker. 2) A trade-off between...

The paper considers the implications of the rational expectations New Classical Macroeconomics revolution for the 'rules versus discretion' debate. The following issues are covered: 1) The ineffectiveness of anticipated stabilization policy, 2) Non-clausal models and rational expectations, 3)...