We analyse optimal monetary and fiscal policy in a New-Keynesian model with public debt and inflation persistence. Leith and Wren-Lewis (2007) have shown that optimal discretionary policy is subject to a 'debt stabilization bias' which requires debt to be returned to its pre-shock level. This...

This paper examines the efficacy of food consumption subsidies as anti-inflation policy in developing countries characterized by rigidities of food supply. First a standard structuralist model is utilized to show that though a policy of food consumption subsidies brings down inflation in the...

This paper investigates the current debate regarding the robustness of estimates of export demand and supply elasticities for LDCs and NIEs obtained by recent empirical studies. The empirical findings reported in the paper suggest that price elasticities of demand are indeed low, and that there...

This paper adds a highly-leveraged financial sector to the Ramsey model of economic growth and shows that this causes the economy to behave in a highly volatile manner: doing this strongly augments the macroeconomic effects of aggregate productivity shocks. Our model is built on the financial...

In EMU, a country may have difficulty ensuring stability in the face of asymmetric shocks; the response may be unstable, or, even if not, the real exchange rate might overshoot. Fiscal policy may help to stabilise inflation and also to target the real exchange rate. The paper argues that an...

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...

This paper investigates the importance of ?scal policy in providing macroeconomic stabilisation in a monetary union. We use a microfounded New Keynesian model of a monetary union which incorporates persistence in in?ation and non-Ricardian consumers, and derive optimal simple rules for ?scal...