This paper considers a general class of nonlinear rational-expectations models in which policymakers seek to maximize an objective function that may be household expected utility. We show how to derive a target criterion that is: (i) consistent with the model's structural equations, (ii) strong...

Should rational agents take into consideration government policy announcements? A skilled agent (an econometrician) could set up a model to combine the following two pieces of information in order to anticipate the future course of fiscal policy in real-time: (i) the ex-ante path of policy as...

This paper characterizes Ramsey-optimal monetary policy in a medium-scale macroeconomic model that has been estimated to fit well postwar US business cycles. We find that mild deflation is Ramsey optimal in the long run. However, the optimal inflation rate appears to be highly sensitive to the...

Central banks’ economic and political importance has grown in advanced economies since the start of the Great Financial Crisis in 2007. An unwillingness or inability of governments to use countercyclical fiscal policy has made monetary policy the only stabilization tool in town. However, much...

Monetary and Fiscal policies interact in many ways. Recently the stance of fiscal policy in a number of countries has raised concerns about the risks for the outcomes of monetary policy. This paper first shows that these concerns are justified since, under ambitious fiscal policy makers,...

We study optimal monetary and fiscal stabilization policy in a two-country monetary union in the presence of (inefficient) mark-up shocks, price rigidities and monopolistic competition. The underlying dynamic system contains two Phillips curves featuring public spending and mark-up shocks. We...

This paper studies the interactions of fiscal and monetary policy when they stabilise a single economy against shocks in a dynamic setting. We assume that fiscal and monetary policies both stabilise the economy only by causing changes to aggregate demand. Our findings are as follows. If the both...

We analyse the proposed ‘stability pact’ for countries joining a European Monetary Union (EMU). Within EMU shortsighted governments fail to fully internalize the inflationary consequences of their debt policies, which results in excessive debt accumulation. Hence, although in the absence of...

We explore endogenous monetary unification in the context of a model in which a country with serious structural distortions (and, hence, high inflation) is admitted into a monetary union once its economic structure has converged sufficiently towards that of the existing participants. If...

This Paper studies optimal fiscal and monetary policy under imperfect competition in a stochastic, flexible-price, production economy without capital. It shows analytically that in this economy the nominal interest rate acts as an indirect tax on monopoly profits. Unless the social planner has...