This paper investigates the consequences of fiscal policies for the exchange rate. After developing a simple theory of how government financing policies should effect the exchange rate, we test it using data on the dollar/pound exchange rate. Previous analyses have concentrated mainly on the...

This note comments on two central issues for fiscal policy design in the UK, highlighted in the recent Code for Fiscal Stability' proposed by the new Labour government. The first concerns the merits of the so-called golden rule of public sector investment' -- the proposition that, over the...

The paper analyses the role of fiscal policy in the restoration of internal and external macroeconomic equilibrium and in achieving structural adjustment i.e. major changes in the patterns of sectoral and intertemporal resource allocation. The focus is on developing and new industrial countries...

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,...

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)...

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)...