We develop a Fiscal Frontier which traces out the maximum government debt level that can be sustained at a given welfare cost. Through duality, the intertemporal policy mix underpinning the Frontier mirrors standard Ramsey policy and defines an upper limit on the welfare gains that can be...

Using a small-scale microfounded DSGE model with Markov switching in shock variances and policy parameters, we show that the data-preferred description of US monetary policy is a time consistent targeting rule with a marked increase in conservatism after the 1970s. However, the Fed lost its...