Using a closed-economy model, Jensen (2002) and Walsh (2003), have, respectively shown that a policy regime that optimally targets nominal income growth (NIT) or the change in the output gap (SLT) outperforms a regime that targets inflation, because NIT and SLT induce more inertia in the actions...

One of the central lessons learned from the Great Depression was that adjusting government spending each year to balance the budget increases the volatility of output. We compare this policy with one that involves running temporary deficits and surpluses and an average budget balance of zero....