Fiscal Policy in a Monetary Union: Can Fiscal Cooperation be Counterproductive?

Abstract

We analyze the interaction of monetary and fiscal policies in a monetary union where the common central bank is more conservative than the fiscal authorities. When monetary and fiscal policies are discretionary, we find that the Nash equilibrium is sub-optimal with higher output and lower inflation than the cooperative Ramsey op- timum. In a further example of counterproductive cooperative, we find that fiscal cooperation makes matters worse. We also examine cooperative and non-cooperative fiscal policy in the case where the central bank can commit and has the same prefer- ences as the fiscal authorities.fiscal-monetary policy interactions, fiscal cooperation and non-cooperation.