Credibility and Nominal Debt

Credibility and Nominal Debt
Author: International Monetary Fund
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
Total Pages: 28
Release: 1989-09-14
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1451958501

This paper focuses on the role of debt maturity in managing the government’s incentives to use opportunistic inflation to reduce the ex post real value of its nominal liabilities. The maturity structure of government debt is shown to be a powerful instrument to affect the time profile of the inflation tax base and, hence, to mitigate the distortions introduced by time inconsistency on taxation policies. The nature of the optimal policy is shown to be heavily dependent on the type of precommitment enjoyed by policymakers.

The Liquidation of Government Debt

The Liquidation of Government Debt
Author: Ms.Carmen Reinhart
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
Total Pages: 47
Release: 2015-01-21
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1498338380

High public debt often produces the drama of default and restructuring. But debt is also reduced through financial repression, a tax on bondholders and savers via negative or belowmarket real interest rates. After WWII, capital controls and regulatory restrictions created a captive audience for government debt, limiting tax-base erosion. Financial repression is most successful in liquidating debt when accompanied by inflation. For the advanced economies, real interest rates were negative 1⁄2 of the time during 1945–1980. Average annual interest expense savings for a 12—country sample range from about 1 to 5 percent of GDP for the full 1945–1980 period. We suggest that, once again, financial repression may be part of the toolkit deployed to cope with the most recent surge in public debt in advanced economies.

The Great Inflation

The Great Inflation
Author: Michael D. Bordo
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 545
Release: 2013-06-28
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0226066959

Controlling inflation is among the most important objectives of economic policy. By maintaining price stability, policy makers are able to reduce uncertainty, improve price-monitoring mechanisms, and facilitate more efficient planning and allocation of resources, thereby raising productivity. This volume focuses on understanding the causes of the Great Inflation of the 1970s and ’80s, which saw rising inflation in many nations, and which propelled interest rates across the developing world into the double digits. In the decades since, the immediate cause of the period’s rise in inflation has been the subject of considerable debate. Among the areas of contention are the role of monetary policy in driving inflation and the implications this had both for policy design and for evaluating the performance of those who set the policy. Here, contributors map monetary policy from the 1960s to the present, shedding light on the ways in which the lessons of the Great Inflation were absorbed and applied to today’s global and increasingly complex economic environment.

Is Inflation Effective for Liquidating Short-Term Nominal Debt?

Is Inflation Effective for Liquidating Short-Term Nominal Debt?
Author: International Monetary Fund
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
Total Pages: 14
Release: 1989-01-01
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 145193095X

The possibility of reducing the real value of domestic non-indexed government debt through inflation is studied. A central result is that this kind of debt liquidation is possible even though prices are sticky and government bonds are short term. A policy implication is that short bond maturities are no safeguard against surprise devaluations intended to lower the burden of the debt. If devaluation incentives are present, it is further argued that nominal non-indexed bonds could give rise to situations where devaluations are a consequence of self-fulfilling expectations cycles. Any views expressed in the Departmental Memoranda (DM) Series represent the opinions of the authors and, unless otherwise indicated, should not be interpreted as official Fund views.

Inflation Implications of Rising Government Debt

Inflation Implications of Rising Government Debt
Author: Chryssi Giannitsarou
Publisher:
Total Pages: 38
Release: 2010
Genre:
ISBN:

The intertemporal budget constraint of the government implies a relationship between a ratio of current liabilities to the primary deficit with future values of inflation, interest rates, GDP and narrow money growth and changes in the primary deficit. This relationship defines a natural measure of fiscal balance and can be used as an accounting identity to examine the channels through which governments achieve fiscal sustainability. We evaluate the ability of this framework to account for the fiscal behaviour of six industrialised nations since 1960. We show how fiscal imbalances are mainly removed through adjustments in the primary deficit (80-100%), with less substantial roles being played by inflation (0-10%) and GDP growth (0-20%). Focusing on the relation between fiscal imbalances and inflation suggests extremely modest interactions. This post WWII evidence suggests that the widely anticipated future increases in fiscal deficits, need not necessarily have a substantial impact on inflation.

Simple Monetary Rules Under Fiscal Dominance

Simple Monetary Rules Under Fiscal Dominance
Author: Michael Kumhof
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
Total Pages: 32
Release: 2007-12
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN:

This paper asks whether an aggressive monetary policy response to inflation is feasible in countries that suffer from fiscal dominance, as long as monetary policy also responds to fiscal variables. We find that if nominal interest rates are allowed to respond to government debt, even aggressive rules that satisfy the Taylor principle can produce unique equilibria. But following such rules results in extremely volatile inflation. This leads to very frequent violations of the zero lower bound on nominal interest rates that make such rules infeasible. Even within the set of feasible rules the optimal response to inflation is highly negative, and more aggressive inflation fighting is inferior from a welfare point of view. The welfare gain from responding to fiscal variables is minimal compared to the gain from eliminating fiscal dominance.

Government Debt and Long-term Interest Rates

Government Debt and Long-term Interest Rates
Author: Noriaki Kinoshita
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
Total Pages: 30
Release: 2006
Genre: Debts, Public
ISBN:

This paper examines the relationship between government debt and long-term interest rates. A dynamic general equilibrium model that incorporates debt nonneutrality is specified and solved, and numerical simulations using the model are undertaken. In addition, empirical evidence using panel data for 19 industrial countries is examined. The estimation provides some evidence supporting the theoretical predictions: the paper finds that the simulated and estimated interest rate effects of government debt tend to be small. However, an increase in government consumption and debt leads to a considerably larger effect. The paper also argues that, although the interest rate effects of pure crowding out may be limited, the economic impact of accumulating government debt cannot be ignored.

Is the Quantity of Government Debt a Constraint for Monetary Policy?

Is the Quantity of Government Debt a Constraint for Monetary Policy?
Author: Srobona Mitra
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
Total Pages: 30
Release: 2007-03
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN:

This paper derives an interest rate rule for monetary policy in which the interest rate response of the central bank toward an increase in expected inflation falls as debts increase beyond a certain threshold level. A debt-constrained interest rate rule and the threshold level of debt are jointly estimated for Canada during the first decade of its inflation targeting regime of the 1990s. There are three main findings of this paper. First, a high government debt could constrain monetary policy if government spending-rather than taxes-is expected to adjust in future in line with debt service costs. The 'constraint' operates through an altered policy transmission mechanism through changes in the IS curve. Second, the effects of the debt-constraint on monetary policy are quite different during booms and recessions. Third, empirical estimates show that Canadian monetary policy might have been constrained by a high government debt-GDP ratio during the 1990s. Policy was less loose than what inflation indicators called for.