Fiscal Policy as a Stabilisation Device for an Open Economy Inside or Outside EMU

Extending Gali and Monacelli (2004), we build an N-country open economy model, where each economy is subject to sticky wages and prices and, potentially, has access to sales and income taxes as well as government spending as fiscal instruments. We examine an economy either as a small open economy under flexible exchange rates or as a member of a monetary union. In a small open economy when all three fiscal instruments are freely available, we show analytically that the impact of technology and mark-up shocks can be completely eliminated, whether policy acts with discretion or commitment. However, once any one of these fiscal instruments is excluded as a stabilisation tool, costs can emerge. Using simulations, we find that the useful fiscal instrument in this case (in the sense of reducing the welfare costs of the shock) is either income taxes or sales taxes. In contrast, having government spending as an instrument contributes very little. In the case of mark-up shocks tax instruments which can offset the impact of the shock directly are highly effective, while other fiscal instruments are less useful. The results for an individual member of a monetary union facing an idiosyncratic technology shock (where monetary policy in the union does not respond) are very different. First, even with all fiscal instruments freely available, the technology shock will incur welfare costs. Government spending is potentially useful as a stabilisation device, because it can act as a partial substitute for monetary policy. Finally, sales taxes are more effective than income taxes at reducing the costs of a technology shock under monetary union. If all three taxes are available, they can reduce the impact of the technology shock on the union member by around a half, compared to the case where fiscal policy is not used. Finally we consider the robustness of these results to two extensions. Firstly, introducing government debt, such that policy makers take account of the debt consequences of using fiscal instruments as stabilisation devices, and, secondly, introducing implementation lags in the use of fiscal instruments. We find that the need for debt sustainability has very limited impact on the use of fiscal instruments for stabilisation purposes, while implementation lags can reduce, but not eliminate, the gains from fiscal stabilisation.

The Costs of Fiscal Inflexibility - Extended

Extending Gali and Monacelli (2004 ), we build an N-country open economy model, where each economy is subject to sticky wages and prices and, potentially, has access to sales and income taxes as well as government spending as fiscal instruments. We examine an economy either as a small open economy under flexible exchange rates or as a (small) member of a monetary union. In a small open economy when all three fiscal instruments are freely available, we show analytically that the impact of technology and mark-up shocks can be completely eliminated, whether policy acts with discretion or commitment. However, once any one of these fiscal instruments is excluded as a stabilisation tool, costs can emerge. Using simulations, we find that the useful fiscal instrument in this case (in the sense of reducing the welfare costs of the shock) are sales taxes. In contrast, having government spending as an instrument contributes very little. In the case of mark-up shocks tax instruments which can offset the impact of the shock directly are highly effective, while other fiscal instruments are less useful. The results for an individual member of a monetary union facing an idiosyncratic technology shock (where monetary policy in the union does not respond) are very different. First, even with all fiscal instruments freely available, the technology shock will incur welfare costs. Second, government spending is potentially useful as a stabilisation device, because it can act as a partial substitute for monetary policy. Finally, income taxes are helpful in reducing the cost of a technology shock, although sales taxes remain the most effective instrument. If all three taxes are available, they can reduce the impact of the technology shock on the union member by around a half, compared to the case where fiscal policy is not used. Finally we consider the robustness of these results to two extensions. Firstly, introducing implementation lags in the use of fiscal instruments and, secondly, introducing government debt, such that policy makers take account of the debt consequences of using fiscal instruments as stabilisation devices. We find that implementation lags can reduce, but not eliminate, the gains from fiscal stabilisation, while the need for debt sustainability has limited impact on the use of fiscal instruments for stabilisation purposes, particularly under commitment..

Fiscal Sustainability in a New Keynesian Model

There has been a wealth of recent work deriving optimal monetary policy utilising New Neo-Classical Synthesis (NNCS) models based on nominal inertia. Such models typically abstract from the impact of monetary policy on the government’s finances, by assuming that consumers are infinitely-lived and taxes are lump-sum such that Ricardian Equivalence holds. In this paper, in the context of a sticky-price NNCS model, we assume that the government must adjust spending and/or distortionary taxation to satisfy its intertemporal budget constraint. We then consider optimal monetary and fiscal policies under discretion and commitment in the face of technology, preference and cost-push shocks. We find that the optimal precommitment policy implies a random walk in the steady-state level of debt, generalising earlier results that involved only a single fiscal instrument. In the case of negative fiscal shocks this implies permanently higher taxation and lower output and government spending to support the new steady-state debt stock, but the optimal combination of these variables will ensure a zero rate of inflation under commitment. We also find that the time-inconsistency in the optimal precommitment policy is such that governments are tempted, given inflationary expectations, to raise taxation to reduce the ultimate debt burden they need to service. Since taxation is a distortionary labour income tax, this aggressive raising of taxation raises firms’ marginal costs and fuels inflation. We show that this temptation is only eliminated if following shocks, the new steady-state debt is equal to the original, first-best, debt level. This implies that under discretionary policy the random walk result is overturned: debt will always be returned to this initial steady-state even although there is no explicit debt target in the government’s objective function. In a series of numerical simulations we show that the welfare consequences of introducing debt are negligible for precommitment policies, but can be significant for discretionary policy.

Electoral uncertainty and the deficit bias in a New Keynesian Economy

Recent attempts to incorporate optimal fiscal policy into New Keynesian models subject to nominal inertia, have tended to assume that policy makers are benevolent and have access to a commitment technology. A separate literature, on the New Political Economy, has focused on real economies where there is strategic use of policy instruments in a world of political conflict. In this paper we combine these literatures and assume that policy is set in a New Keynesian economy by one of two policy makers facing electoral uncertainty (in terms of infrequent elections and an endogenous voting mechanism). The policy makers generally share the social welfare function, but differ in their preferences over fiscal expenditure (in its size and/or composition). Given the environment, policy shall be realistically constrained to be time-consistent. In a sticky-price economy, such heterogeneity gives rise to the possibility of one policy maker utilising (nominal) debt strategically to tie the hands of the other party, and influence the outcome of any future elections. This can give rise to a deficit bias, implying a sub-optimally high level of steady-state debt, and can also imply a sub-optimal response to shocks. The steady-state distortions and inflation bias this generates, combined with the volatility induced by the electoral cycle in a sticky-price environment, can significantly raise the costs of having a less thankfully benevolent policy maker.New Keynesian Model; Government Debt; Monetary Policy; Fiscal Policy, Electoral Uncertainty, Time Consistency.

Interactions Between Monetary and Fiscal Policy under Flexible Exchange Rates

The potential importance of fiscal policy in influencing inflation has recently been highlighted, following Woodford (1995), under the heading of the ‘Fiscal Theory of the Price Level’ (FTPL). Applications of this theory to open economies operating under flexible exchange rates has suggested that, in contrast to the closed economy FTPL, insolvent fiscal policy may lead to indeterminacy of price levels and nominal exchange rates. In this paper, we relax the assumptions underpinning the FTPL by developing a two country open economy model, where each country has overlapping generations of non-Ricardian consumers who supply labour to imperfectly competitive firms which can only change their prices infrequently. We examine the case where the two countries have independent monetary and fiscal policies. We show that the fiscal response required to ensure stability of the real debt stock, and allow each country to operate an ‘active’ inflation-targeting monetary policy is greater when consumers are not infinitely lived. One monetary authority can abandon its active targeting of inflation to stabilise the debt of another fiscal authority, and there is no requirement that these policy makers operate in the same economy. Finally, in a series of simulations we show that fiscal shocks have limited impact on output and inflation provided the fiscal authorities meet the (weak) requirements of fiscal solvency. However, when one or more monetary authority is forced to abandon its active targeting of inflation, then fiscal shocks have a much greater impact on both output and inflation.Monetary Policy; Fiscal Policy; New Open Economy Macroeconomics; Fiscal Theory of the Price Level

Fiscal Stabilisation Policy and Fiscal Institutions

In this paper we analyse countercyclical fiscal policy within the context of a microfounded analysis of business cycle stabilisation. We show that tax and spending instruments can have a useful counter cyclical role, even after allowing for the distortionary nature of the instruments and the need for debt sustainability. A critical barrier to the use of fiscal instruments may be political economy concerns, and we survey recent suggestions involving alternative fiscal policy institutions.

The Costs of Fiscal Inflexibility

Extending Gali and Monacelli (2004), we build an N-country open economy model, where each economy is subject to sticky wages and prices and, potentially, has access to sales and income taxes as well as government spending as fiscal instruments. We examine an economy either as a small open economy operating under flexible exchange rates or as a member of a monetary union. In a small open economy when all three fiscal instruments are freely available, we show analytically that the welfare impact of technology and mark-up shocks can be completely eliminated (in the sense that policy can replicate the efficient flex price equilibrium), whether policy acts with discretion or commitment. However, once any one of these fiscal instruments is excluded as a stabilisation tool, costs can emerge. Using simulations, we find that the useful fiscal instrument in this case (in the sense of reducing the welfare costs of the shock) is either income taxes or sales taxes. In constrast, having government spending as an instrument contributes very little. The results for an individual member of a monetary union facing an idiosyncratic technology shock (where monetary policy in the union does not respond) are very different. First, even with all fiscal instruments freely available, the technology shock will incur welfare costs. Government spending is potentially useful as a stabilisation device, because it can act as a partial substitute for monetary policy. Finally, sales taxes are more effective than income taxes at reducing the costs of a technology shock under monetary union. If all three taxes are available, they can reduce the impact of the technology shock on the union member by around a half, compared to the case where fiscal policy is not used. Finally we consider the robustness of these results to two extensions. Firstly, introducing government debt, such that policy makers take account of the debt consequences of using fiscal instruments as stabilisation devices, and, secondly, introducing implementation lags in the use of fiscal instruments. We find that the need for debt sustainability has a very limited impact on the use of fiscal instruments for stabilisation purposes, while implementation lags can reduce, but not eliminate, the gains from fiscal stabilisation.

Debt stabilization in a Non-Ricardian economy

In models with a representative infinitely lived household, tax smoothing implies that the steady state of government debt should follow a random walk. This is unlikely to be the case in overlapping generations (OLG) economies, where the equilibrium interest rate may differ from the policy maker's rate of time preference. It may therefore be optimal to reduce debt today to reduce distortionary taxation in the future. In addition, the level of the capital stock in these economies is likely to be suboptimally low, and reducing government debt will crowd in additional capital. Using a version of the Blanchard-Yaari model of perpetual youth, with both public and private capital, we show that it is optimal in steady state for the government to hold assets. However, we also show how and why this level of government assets can fall short of both the level of debt that achieves the optimal capital stock and the level that eliminates income taxes. Finally, we compute the optimal adjustment path to this steady state

Discretionary policy in a monetary union with sovereign debt

This paper examines the interactions between multiple national fiscal policy- makers and a single monetary policy maker in response to shocks to govern- ment debt in some or all of the countries of a monetary union. We assume that national governments respond to excess debt in an optimal manner, but that they do not have access to a commitment technology. This implies that national fiscal policy gradually reduces debt: the lack of a commitment technology pre- cludes a random walk in steady state debt, but the need to maintain national competitiveness avoids excessively rapid debt reduction. If the central bank can commit, it adjusts its policies only slightly in response to higher debt, allowing national fiscal policy to undertake most of the adjustment. However if it cannot commit, then optimal monetary policy involves using interest rates to rapidly reduce debt, with significant welfare costs. We show that in these circumstances the central bank would do better to ignore national fiscal policies in formulating its policy.