Essays in International Macroeconomics

Essays in International Macroeconomics
Author: Xuan Liu
Publisher:
Total Pages: 174
Release: 2007
Genre:
ISBN: 9781109937282

This dissertation consists of two essays in international macroeconomics. The first essay shows that optimal fiscal and monetary policy is time consistent in a standard small open economy. Further, there exist many maturity structures of public debt capable of rendering the optimal policy time consistent. This result is in sharp contrast with that obtained in the context of closed-economy models. In the closed economy, the time consistency of optimal monetary and fiscal policy imposes severe restrictions on public debt in the form of a unique term structure of public debt that governments can leave to their successors at each point in time. The time consistent result is robust: optimal policy is time consistent when both real and nominal bonds have finite horizons. While in a closed economy, governments must have both nominal and real bonds, and have at least real bonds over an infinite horizon to render optimal policy time consistent.

Essays on Monetary and Fiscal Policy

Essays on Monetary and Fiscal Policy
Author: Choongryul Yang
Publisher:
Total Pages: 392
Release: 2020
Genre:
ISBN:

My dissertation investigates the transmission of monetary and fiscal policy using both empirical and theoretical frameworks. Chapter 1 examines how the number of products sold by a firm affect its decisions regarding price setting and information acquisition. Using a firm-level survey from New Zealand, I show that firms that produce more goods have both better information about aggregate inflation and more frequent but smaller price changes. To characterize the implications of these empirical findings for the ability of monetary policy to stimulate the economy, I develop a new dynamic general equilibrium model with rationally inattentive multi-product firms that pay a menu cost to reset their prices. I show that the interaction of the menu cost and rational inattention frictions leads firms to adopt a wait-and-see policy and gives rise to a new selection effect: firms have time-varying inaction bands widened by their subjective uncertainty about the economy such that price adjusters choose to be better informed than non-adjusters. This selection effect endogenously generates a distribution of desired price changes with a majority near zero and some very far from zero, which acts as a strong force to amplify monetary non-neutrality. I calibrate the model to be consistent with the micro-evidence on both prices and inattention and find two main quantitative results. First, the new selection effect, coupled with imperfect information of price setters, leads to real effects of monetary policy shocks in the one-good version of the model that are nearly as large as those in the Calvo model. Second, in the two-good version of the model, as firms optimally choose to have better information about monetary shocks, the real effects of monetary policy shocks decline by 20%. In Chapter 2, joint with Hassan Afrouzi, we develop a general equilibrium flexible price model with dynamic rational inattention in which the slope of the Phillips curve is endogenous to systematic aspects of monetary policy. This Phillips curve is flatter when the monetary policy is more hawkish: rationally inattentive firms find it optimal to ignore monetary policy shocks when the monetary authority commits to stabilize nominal variables. Moreover, an unexpectedly more dovish monetary policy leads to a completely flat Phillips curve in the short-run and a steeper Phillips curve in the long-run. We also develop a tractable method for solving general dynamic rational inattention models in linear quadratic Gaussian setups. Chapter 3 asks whether the effectiveness of fiscal stimulus policy depends on the degree of economic income inequality. Many previous works about state-dependence of fiscal multiplier have focused on the degree of slack in the economy. In a surge of concerns about rising inequality of the U.S., I use rich historical state-level data on military procurement and inequality to find the relationship between the degree of income inequality and the local government spending multipliers. I show that the effects of government spending shocks on output are larger in low-inequality states than in high-inequality states. In contrast, I find no evidence that employment multipliers differ by the extent of income inequality. These results are robust to various specifications and other sources of inequality data. I also estimate aggregate output multipliers using historical military spending and income inequality data. I find the evidence that aggregate output multipliers are high when the income inequality is low. Thus, both local and aggregate multipliers are significantly affected by the degree of income inequality of an economy. I consider a variety of potential theoretical explanations for the results, including heterogeneous within-sector inequality and distributional effects of government spending shock, but find that none can adequately explain this finding

Essays on Monetary and Fiscal Policy Interactions in Small Open Economies

Essays on Monetary and Fiscal Policy Interactions in Small Open Economies
Author: Thitima Chucherd
Publisher:
Total Pages: 474
Release: 2013
Genre: Fiscal policy
ISBN:

This thesis addresses interactions between monetary and fiscal policies in a theoretical dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model of a small open economy and in an empirical model under a structural vector error correction model (SVECM). The thesis consists of three essays. The contribution is both theoretical and empirical that enables a better understanding of the complexity of interactions between monetary and fiscal policies in small open economies. The first essay examines the equilibrium determinacy under monetary and fiscal rules. The goal is to investigate how monetary and fiscal policy interactions ensure a unique and non-explosive (determinate) equilibrium for a small open economy. The study focuses when policy makers implement a set of policy mixes to address domestic output price inflation control for monetary policy, debt stabilization for fiscal policy, and joint output stabilization tasks. The result indicates that two policy schemes facilitate a determinate equilibrium. First, monetary policy actively controls inflation when fiscal policy sets a sufficient feedback on debt. Second, monetary policy becomes passive against inflation when fiscal policy is insolvent. Adding output stabilization to each rule simply causes variants of this fundamental. An interest rate rule with output stabilization can be more passive against inflation while providing a stronger response to the output gap. Fiscal policy is required to set higher feedback on debt along with its stronger counter-cyclical policy. The second essay links between the equilibrium determinacy and policy optimization. This essay provides insights into the design of policy mixes and compares determinacy outcomes between two theoretical models of a small open economy: with and without an explicit exchange rate role. This study shows that policy interactions in a small open economy with an endogenous exchange rate is quite sophisticated, especially when a monetary rule is added with an output stabilization task and/or targeted to Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation. Additional concern for monetary policy in an open economy causes a partial offset to its reaction on domestic output price inflation that weakens its effect on the real debt burden. To minimize economic fluctuations, policy makers should mute the role of output stabilization for monetary policy, and set minimum feedback on debt that is compatible with the degree of counter-cyclical fiscal policy. Substantially active response to inflation is satisfactory for monetary policy with CPI inflation targeting. The third essay empirically presents monetary and fiscal policy interactions in Thailand's SVECM suggested by a theoretical DSGE model developed from the previous essays. This essay shows that the DSGE-SVECM model can be supported by Thai data. A shock to monetary policy is effective with a lag. Government spending policy is also effective with a lag and some crowding-out effects on output. An adverse shock in tax policy unexpectedly stimulates the economy, indicating room for enhancing economic growth by relaxing revenue constraint. Monetary policy is mainly implemented to correct a consequence of a fiscal shock on inflation (and also the domestic and foreign shocks), while fiscal policy appears to counter a consequence of the monetary policy shock on output.

Essays in Macroeconomic Theory

Essays in Macroeconomic Theory
Author: Antoine Camous
Publisher:
Total Pages: 114
Release: 2015
Genre: Fiscal policy
ISBN:

This thesis investigates the design of appropriate institutions to ensure the good conduct of fiscal and monetary policy. The three chapters develop theoretical frameworks to address the time-inconsistency of policy plans or prevent the occurrence of self-fulfilling prophecies. Time-inconsistency refers to a situation where preferences over policy change over time. Optimal policy plans are not credible, since agents anticipate the implementation of another policy in the future. This issue is particularly pervasive to monetary policy, since nominal quantities (price level, interest rates, etc.) are very sensitive to expected policies, but predetermined to actual policy choices. The first chapter investigates how fiscal policy can mitigate the inflation bias of monetary policy in an economy with heterogeneous agents. Whenever there is a desire for redistribution, progressive fiscal helps to implement a policy mix less biased toward inflation. Importantly, even the richest supports some fiscal progressivity, since over their life cycle, they benefit from a more balanced policy-mix. A self-fulfilling prophecy, or coordination failure, refers to a situation where a more desirable economic outcome could be reached, but fail to be, by the only effect of pessimistic expectations. Self-fulfilling debt crises are a classical example: pessimistic investors bid down the price of debt, which increases the likelihood of default, which in turn justifies the initial decrease in price. The second chapter, co-authored with Russell Cooper, asks whether monetary policy can deter self-fulfilling debt crises. The analysis shows how a counter-cyclical inflation policy with commitment is effective in doing so. Importantly, it can be implemented without endangering the primary objective of monetary policy, to deliver an inflation target for instance. The third chapter, co-authored with Andrew Gimber, revisits the classic Laffer curve coordination failure: taxes could be low, but they are high because agents anticipate high tax rates. In a dynamic environment with debt issuance, the multiplicity of equilibria critically depends on inherited debt. At high levels of public debt, fiscal policy is pro-cyclical: taxes increase when output decreases, and self-fulfilling fiscal crisis can occur. Overall, this chapter sheds light on the perils of high level of public debt.