Costs of Separating Budgetary Policy from Control of Inflation: A Neglected Aspect of Central Bank Independence.

The authors investigate the importance of coordinating monetary and fiscal policy in a fully dynamic model. The monetary authority seeks to control inflation while the fiscal authority has a budgetary target. They investigate the resulting Nash equilibrium and the consequences of a period of learning which may arise if each authority is not ex ante sure of the responses of the other. Both of these impact considerably on the outcome and indicate that there may be considerable costs to separating monetary and fiscal policy. Copyright 1998 by Royal Economic Society.