We consider a model in which the level of taxes and seignorage are too low to finance government expenditures and debt service. Government debt will therefore grow without bound, implying the eventual need to change policy. Starting with utility maximization, we analyze the effect of the...

This paper analyzes the effects of monetary and fiscal policy shocks on the term structure of interest rates. The effects of temporary versus permanent, unanticipated versus anticipated, policy disturbances and the responses of long versus short, and real versus nominal, rates are contrasted....

This paper first investigates the effects of alternatives modes of deficit financing on the unemployment rate, inflation rate, and the real interest rate, within the framework of a small complete macroeconomic model. Secondly, it examines the nature of monetary and fiscal reaction functions. The...

This paper emphasizes how the choice of the optimal monetary growth rate in a small open economy under perfect capital mobility depends upon the accommodating policy chosen to maintain the overall budget constraint in the economy. When this occurs through lump sum taxation, the optimal monetary...

This paper analyzes the effects of anticipated and unanticipated domestic monetary and fiscal expansions on both the domestic and foreign economies. The analysis is based on symmetric behavior, which is not only not an unreasonable first approximation, but also offers significant analytical...

Conventional wisdom is that good economic conditions or expansionary fiscal policy help incumbents get re-elected, but this has not been tested in a large cross-section of countries. We test these arguments in a sample of 74 countries over the period 1960-2003. We find no evidence that deficits...

Like other recent studies, we find the existence of a political deficit cycle in a large cross-section of countries. However, we find that this result is driven by the experience of new democracies'. The strong budget cycle in those countries accounts for the finding of a budget cycle in larger...

We propose and solve an optimizing model which explains counterintuitive effects of fiscal policy in terms of expectations. If government spending follows an upward-trending stochastic process which the public believes may fall sharply when it reaches specific "target points," then optimizing...

This paper analyzes the effects of changes in government expenditures on both a domestically produced and an imported good in an open economy based on intertemporal optimizing behavior. The dynamic adjustment is characterized in detail and the critical role played by the accumulating capital...