Following from Woodford’s derivation of a benevolent monetary policy maker’s objective function from agents utility, a number of papers have suggested that policy in an open economy should have the same objectives as in a closed economy, and in particular that the exchange rate should play...

Most recent work deriving optimal monetary policy utilising New Neo-Classical Synthesis (NNCS) models abstract from the impact of monetary policy on the government’s finances, by assuming the existence of lump sum taxes. In this paper, we assume that the government does not have access to such...

In this paper we present two examples where the presence of inflation persistence could influence the qualitative nature of monetary policy. In the first case the desirability of a monetary policy regime comes under question when extensive inflation persistence exists. In the second case the...

The potential importance of fiscal policy in influencing inflation has recently been highlighted, following Woodford (1998), under the heading of the ‘Fiscal Theory of the Price Level’ (FTPL). Some authors have suggested that this theory provides a rationale for the Pact for Stability and...

Taylor rules which link short-term interest rates to fluctuations in inflation and output, have been shown to be a good guide (both positively and normatively) to the conduct of monetary policy. As a result they have been used extensively to model policy in the context of both closed and open...

The potential importance of fiscal policy in influencing inflation has recently been highlighted, following Woodford (1995), under the heading of the ‘Fiscal Theory of the Price Level’ (FTPL). Applications of this theory to open economies operating under flexible exchange rates has suggested...

Recent attempts to incorporate optimal fiscal policy into New Keynesian models subject to nominal inertia, have tended to assume that policy makers are benevolent and have access to a commitment technology. A separate literature, on the New Political Economy, has focused on real economies where...

Extending Gali and Monacelli (2004 ), we build an N-country open economy model, where each economy is subject to sticky wages and prices and, potentially, has access to sales and income taxes as well as government spending as fiscal instruments. We examine an economy either as a small open...

This paper attempts to quantify the costs imposed by asymmetric shocks under European Monetary Union compared to free floating. A simple two-country model is examined where policy is set in an optimal, time consistent manner. Nominal and real rigidities are present in both economies, but prices...