This paper extends the sovereign default model described in Arellano (2008) by including both domestic and foreign debts. The government issues debt and can either inflate away its domestic debt or default on its external component. Under a discretionary policy, the existence of domestic debt...

Societies often rely on simple rules to restrict the size and behavior of governments. When fiscal and monetary policies are conducted by a discretionary and profligate government, I find that revenue ceilings vastly outperform debt, deficit and monetary rules, both in effectiveness at curbing...