We estimate a model in which fiscal and monetary policy obey the targeting rules of distinct policy authorities, with potentially different objective functions. We find: (1) Time‐consistent policy fits U.S. time series at least as well as instrument‐rules‐based behavior; (2) American...

We consider price level determination from the perspective of portfolio choice. Arbitrages among money balances, bonds, and investment goods determine their relative demands. Returns to real balance holdings (transactions services), the nominal interest rate, and after-tax returns to investment...

When Roosevelt abandoned the gold standard in April 1933, he converted government debt from a tax-backed claim to gold to a claim to dollars, opening the door to unbacked fiscal expansion. Roosevelt followed a state-contingent fiscal rule that ran nominal-debt-financed primary deficits until the...

Money demand and the stock of money have all but disappeared from monetary policy analyses. Remarkably, it is more common for empirical work on monetary policy to include commodity prices than to include money. This paper establishes and explores the empirical fact that whether money enters a...

Neoclassical growth models predict that reductions in capital or labor tax rates are expansionary when lump-sum transfers are used to balance the government budget. This paper explores the consequences of bond-financed tax reductions that bring forth a range of possible offsetting policies,...

The authors present a framework for computing and evaluating linear projections of macro variables conditional on hypothetical paths of monetary policy. A modest policy intervention is a change in policy that does not significantly shift agents' beliefs about policy regime and does not generate...

The paper explores the macroeconomic consequences of fiscal consolidations whose timing and composition are uncertain. Drawing on the evidence in Alesina and Ardagna (2010), we emphasize whether or not the fiscal consolidation is driven by tax rises or expenditure cuts. We find that the...

We construct linear projections of macro variables conditional on hypothetical paths of monetary policy, using as an example an identified VAR model. Hypothetical policies are restricted to ones where both the policy intervention and its impacts are consistent with history -- otherwise the...