We analyze the characteristics of optimal dynamics in an economy in which neither prices nor wages adjust instantaneously and lump-sum taxes are unavailable as a source of government finance. We then propose that monetar and fiscal policy should be coordinated to satisfy a pair of simple...

We explore the welfare implications of several fiscal policies in an estimated two-country New Open Economy Macroeconomics (NOEM) model of the EuropeanMonetary Union (EMU). The model features incomplete financial markets and home bias in final consumption baskets. We define the optimal monetary...

This Paper studies the role of asset-market completeness for the properties of optimal policy. A suitable framework for this purpose is the small open economy with complete international asset markets. For in this environment changes in policy represent country-specific risk diversifiable in...

Economic theory has yet to come up with a general guidance regarding the dynamic effects and welfare implications of shocks to public spending. With the aim to provide a theoretical benchmark, we analyze if a rise in private consumption following an exogenous rise in government spending is a...

The optimal policy mix maximizes a quadratic welfare objective which follows from the agents’ utility function and depends only on inflation and output gap volatility. We analyze the optimal response of the economy to a rise in government spending. We find that the optimal economy moves...

We investigate the optimal responses of policy authorities through a model where the fiscal and the monetary policymakers are independent and play strategically. We allow for the presence of two types of consumers: ‘Ricardians’, who trade in the assets market and ‘liquidity constrained’...

How do different levels of government debt affect the optimal conduct of monetary and fiscal policies? And what do these optimal policies imply for the evolution of government debt over time? To provide an answer, this paper studies a standard monetary policy model with nominal rigidities and...

This chapter reviews the theory of optimal monetary stabilization policy in New Keynesian models, with particular emphasis on developments since the treatment of this topic in Woodford (2003). The primary emphasis of the chapter is on methods of analysis that are useful in this area, rather than...

We study monetary and fiscal policy games in a dynamic sticky priceeconomy where monetary policy sets nominal interest rates and fiscal policy provides public goods financed with distortionary labor taxes. We compare the Ramsey outcome to non-cooperative policy regimes where one or both...

The timelessly optimal monetary policy proposed by Woodford (2003) may be dominated by alternative timeless policies. We provide a formal justification for these alternative policies. We demonstrate why discount rates do not matter and establish that optimizing over the unconditional expectation...