This paper makes three main points. Fiscal policy, first, may be needed in the long run to maintain full employment and avoid secular stagnation. If fiscal policy is used in this way, second, the long-run debt ratio depends (i) inversely on the rate of growth, (ii) inversely on government...

We construct a monetary economy in which agents face aggregate demand shocks and heterogeneous idiosyncratic preference shocks. We show that, even when the Friedman rule is the best interest rate policy the central bank can implement, not all agents are satiated at the zero lower bound and...