The potential instability of a fixed monetary rule combined with automatic fixed stabilisers is a well-established feature of closed economy IS/LM models with wealth effects and asset accumulation. This paper examines the stability issue in a general open economy macromodel with alternative...

This year the Chancellor introduced a quiet Budget, but not a dull one. In macroeconomic terms, the modest tax cuts that the Chancellor introduced represent a slight tightening of the stance of fiscal policy. This was very much in line with our pre-Budget forecast, and was largely dictated by...

This paper re-examines the issue of the credibility and sustainability of optimal policies derived from Pontryagin's Maximum Principle and generally regarded as time-inconsistent, in models with forward-looking rational expectations. Specifically, it considers the behaviour of such models in the...

That governments should delegate the operation of monetary policy to independent central banks is widely advocated. For a closed economy, the optimal choice results in a banker who is more conservative than the representative government, assigning a lower weight on output in her welfare...

In this book, the latest volume in the annual series published in association with the London Business School and the Institute of Economic Affairs, some of the main issues in UK and EU utility regulation and competition policy are discussed. Topics examined include the new electricity and gas...