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)...

In this paper we reassess the cyclical performance of the French economy in the 1920s, focusing in particular on the period 1926-1931 and on France's resistance to the Great Depression. France expanded rapidly after 1926 and, unlike the other leading industrial economies, resisted the onset of...

The paper first reviews the budget identities of the fiscal and monetary authorities and the solvency constraint or present value budget-constraint of the consolidated public sector, for closed and open economies. It then discusses the new conventional wisdom concerning the fiscal roots of...

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...

The paper studies an idealized gold standard in a two-country setting. Without flexible national domestic credit expansion (dce)policies which offset the effect of money demand shocks on international gold reserves, the gold standard collapses with certainty in finite time through a speculative...

The paper studies the effects of alternative financing policies in the open economy.There is a non-trivial role for financial policy because of the failure of first-order debt neutrality due to uncertain private lifetimes. Both the single-country case and the interdependent two-country case are...

The paper develops a forward-looking comprehensive accounting framework for the public sector.By integrating the public sector budget constraint forward in time the government's present value budget constraint (PVBC) is obtained. In addition to the familiar financial assets and liabilities,...

If price decisions are taken neither continuously nor in perfect synchronization, the process of adjustment of all prices to a new nominal level will imply temporary movements in relative prices. It might then well be that, to avoid these movements in relative prices, each price setter will want...

The setup of the paper is as follows: Section I presents a fairly standard, small deterministic macromodel with a number of classical features. All markets clear instantaneously, there is no money illusion, and perfect foresight rules. The effects of monetary, financial, and fiscal policies in...

This paper, a chapter in the forthcoming Oxford University Press Handbook of the Indian Economy, edited by Chetan Ghate, considers India's experience with fiscal (responsibility) rules during the past decade. After reviewing the basic facts concerning public debt and deficits in India, the...