We challenge the widely held belief that New Keynesian models cannot predict an optimal positive inflation rate. In fact we find that even for the US economy, characterized by relatively small government size, optimal trend inflation is justified by the Phelps argument that the inflation tax...

We challenge the widely held belief that New-Keynesian models cannot predict optimal positive in‡ ations. We finnd that these are justified by the Phelps argument. This mainly happens because we also consider distortionary expects of public transfers. Our predictions are broadly consistent...

This paper extends the standard New Keynesian dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model to agents who cannot smooth consumption (i.e. spenders) and are affected by external consumption habits. Although these assumptions are not new, their joint consideration strongly affects some...

In this paper we consider a standard policy game between the Government and a union. In such a framework, we first investigate the effects of corporatism on macroeconomic performance vis-à-vis different kinds of non-co-operative equilibria. Afterwards, we introduce in the literature the issue...

In a monetary union, macroeconomic policies are strongly associated with externalities that seem to imply the need for macroeconomic policy coordination. However, if coordination is not complete, partial coordination might be unable to cope with the negative externalities arising from a...

The recent economic literature shows a new interest in the links between politics and economics. In this paper, we join Hibbs’ partisanship theory with the literature of fiscal policies international co- ordination. Furthermore, by considering a monetary union context, we also open a new angle...

European countries have progressively integrated from the point of view of trade and investment and have a common currency now. However, labour market and fiscal institutions have largely retained their national status. The aim of this paper is to examine: a) the possibility for trade unions of...

The aim of this paper is to investigate both the efficacy and the stability properties of monetary policy rules in presence of heterogeneous consumers. We aim to underline the link between the well- known Taylor Principle and the demand-policy regimes, defined on the basis of the monetary policy...

This paper extends a well-known macroeconomic stabilization game between monetary and fiscal authorities introduced by Dixit and Lambertini (American Economic Review, 93: 1522-1542) to multiplicative (policy) uncertainty. We find that even if fiscal and monetary authorities share a common output...

We investigate the effect of fiscal policy on equilibrium determinacy in a New Keynesian economy with rule-of-thumb (liquidity constrained) consumers and capital accumulation by focusing on the inter-action between monetary policy and taxation under the assumption of balanced budget. Our main...