Essays on Optimal Fiscal Policy in a Small Open Economy [microform]

Essays on Optimal Fiscal Policy in a Small Open Economy [microform]
Author: Constantine Angyridis
Publisher: Library and Archives Canada = Bibliothèque et Archives Canada
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2005
Genre:
ISBN: 9780494027738

In the final essay, I utilize the model developed in the previous one, in order to further investigate the effect of lending and borrowing constraints on the government's implemented fiscal policy. It is demonstrated that the transition from a balanced-budget policy regime to one in which the government is allowed to borrow and lend in order to smooth taxes across time generates significant welfare gains. However, these gains diminish as the persistence of the stochastic process for government expenditures increases. Under a particular assumption regarding the determination of asset prices in the model, it is shown that compared to the two previous policy regimes, overall welfare can be improved upon further if the government is allowed to issue state-contingent debt. This thesis consists of three essays on the conduct of optimal fiscal policy in the context of a stochastic small open economy. In all cases, the model employed to conduct the analysis is characterized by an asymmetry between the government and the representative household with respect to their accessibility to financial markets. In particular, the government is allowed to borrow and lend at a risk-free interest rate, while the household is assumed to have access to complete financial markets. The first essay discusses the restrictions that need to be placed in the presence of shocks to technology on the specification of the production and utility functions, in order for the optimal tax rate on capital income to be zero in all periods (except the initial one). The second essay considers an environment similar to that in Aiyagari et al. (2002) for a closed economy, with no capital and stochastic government expenditures. Using the same parameterization as these authors, it is shown that assuming away market completeness with respect to the public sector of the economy only, is sufficient to yield equilibrium outcomes that are consistent with Barro's (1979) "tax smoothing" result.

Fiscal Policy and Long-Term Growth

Fiscal Policy and Long-Term Growth
Author: International Monetary Fund
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2015-04-20
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1498344658

This paper explores how fiscal policy can affect medium- to long-term growth. It identifies the main channels through which fiscal policy can influence growth and distills practical lessons for policymakers. The particular mix of policy measures, however, will depend on country-specific conditions, capacities, and preferences. The paper draws on the Fund’s extensive technical assistance on fiscal reforms as well as several analytical studies, including a novel approach for country studies, a statistical analysis of growth accelerations following fiscal reforms, and simulations of an endogenous growth model.

Optimal Time-Consistent Monetary, Fiscal and Debt Maturity Policy

Optimal Time-Consistent Monetary, Fiscal and Debt Maturity Policy
Author: Eric Michael Leeper
Publisher:
Total Pages: 45
Release: 2019
Genre: Debts, Public
ISBN:

The textbook optimal policy response to an increase in government debt is simple--monetary policy should actively target inflation, and fiscal policy should smooth taxes while ensuring debt sustainability. Such policy prescriptions presuppose an ability to commit. Without that ability, the temptation to use inflation surprises to offset monopoly and tax distortions, as well as to reduce the real value of government debt, creates a state-dependent inflationary bias problem. High debt levels and short-term debt exacerbate the inflation bias. But this produces a debt stabilization bias because the policy maker wishes to deviate from the tax smoothing policies typically pursued under commitment, by returning government debt to steady-state. As a result, the response to shocks in New Keynesian models can be radically different, particularly when government debt levels are high.

Essays on Monetary Policy

Essays on Monetary Policy
Author: Christoph Himmels
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 2012
Genre:
ISBN:

This thesis consists of three essays on optimal monetary policy. In the first essay I study time-consistent monetary policy in an small open economy model with incomplete financial markets. I demonstrate the existence of two discretionary equilibria. The model is capable of explaining periods of different exchange rate volatilities as well as the transition between those regimes. Following a shock the economy can be stabilised either `quickly' or `slow', where both dynamic paths satisfy the conditions of optimality and time-consistency. I also show that a policy of partially targeting the exchange rate results in far worse welfare outcomes relative to a strict inflation targeting policy. In the second essay, I analyse how a policy maker can avoid expectation traps and coordination failures. Using a framework developed by Schaumburg and Tambalotti (2007) and Debortoli and Nunes (2010) in which a policy maker may or may not default on past promises I show that already mild degrees of precommitment are sufficient to generate uniqueness of the Pareto-preferred equilibrium. In the last chapter, I examine optimal monetary policy from an empirical perspective. I estimate a simple small open economy model separately for a policy maker acting under commitment and discretion and find that the data favours the commitment approach. Furthermore, the data suggest that the Bank of Canada did not target the nominal exchange rate in the inspected time period.

Time-Consistent Optimal Fiscal Policy

Time-Consistent Optimal Fiscal Policy
Author: Paul Klein
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2003
Genre:
ISBN:

This article studies the properties of optimal fiscal policy in a stochastic growth model when the government cannot commit itself beyond the next period's capital income tax rate. We find that the results contrast markedly with those under full commitment. First, capital income tax rates are very high (65% on average versus close to zero on average under full commitment). Second, labor income taxes are rather low on average (about 12% versus a value of around 31% under full commitment). Finally, labor income taxes are quite volatile, whereas under full commitment their standard deviation is essentially zero.

Essays on Optimal Fiscal and Monetary Policies

Essays on Optimal Fiscal and Monetary Policies
Author: Mehrab Kiarsi
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 2016
Genre:
ISBN:

This dissertation consists of three essays on optimal fiscal and monetary policies. In the first two essays, I consider New Keynesian frameworks with frictional labor markets, money and distortionary income tax rates. In the first one, I study the joint determination of optimal fiscal and monetary policy and the role of worker's bargaining power on this determination. In the second one, I study the effects of worker's bargaining power on the welfare costs of three monetary policy rules, which are: inflation targeting and simple monetary rules that respond to output and labor market tightness, with and without interest-rate smoothing. In the third essay, I study the optimality of the Friedman rule in monetary economies where demand for money is motivated by firms, originated in a cash-in-advance constraint. In the first essay, I find that when the worker's bargaining power is low, the Ramsey-optimal policy calls for a significantly high optimal annual rate of inflation, in excess of 9.5%, that is also highly volatile, in excess of 7.4%. The Ramsey government uses inflation to induce efficient fluctuations in labor markets, despite the fact that changing prices is costly and despite the presence of time-varying labor taxes. The quantitative results clearly show that the planner relies more heavily on inflation, not taxes, in smoothing distortions in the economy over the business cycle. Indeed, there is a quite clear trade-off between the optimal inflation rate and its volatility and the optimal income tax rate and its variability. The smaller is the degree of price stickiness, the higher are the optimal inflation rate and inflation volatility and the lower are the optimal income tax rate and income tax volatility. For a ten times smaller degree of price stickiness, the optimal rate of inflation and its volatility rise remarkably, over 58% and 10%, respectively, and the optimal income tax rate and its volatility decline dramatically. These results are significant given that in the frictional labor market models without fiscal policy and money, or in the Walrasian-based New Keynesian frameworks with even a rich array of real and nominal rigidities and for even a miniscule degree of price stickiness, price stability appears to be the central goal of optimal monetary policy. Absent fiscal policy and money demand frictions, optimal rate of inflation falls to very near zero, with a volatility about 97 percent lesser, consistent with the literature. In the second essay, I show how the quantitative results imply that worker's bargaining weight and welfare costs of monetary rules are related negatively. That is, the lower the bargaining power of workers, the larger the welfare losses of monetary rules. However, in a sharp contrast to the literature, the rules that respond to output and labor market tightness feature considerably lower welfare costs than the inflation targeting rule. This is specifically the case for the rule that responds to labor market tightness. The welfare costs also remarkably decline by increasing the size of the output coefficient in the monetary rules. My findings indicate that by raising the worker's bargaining power to the Hosios level and higher, welfare losses of the three monetary rules drop significantly and response to output or market tightness does not, anymore, imply lower welfare costs than the inflation targeting rule, which is in line with the existing literature. In the third essay, I first show that the Friedman rule in a monetary model with a cash-in-advance constraint for firms is not optimal when the government to finance its expenditures has access to distortionary taxes on consumption. I then argue that, the Friedman rule in the presence of these distorting taxes is optimal if we assume a model with raw-efficient labors where only the raw labor is subject to the cash-in-advance constraint and the utility function is homothetic in two types of labor and separable in consumption. Once the production function exhibits constant-returns-to-scale, unlike the cash-credit goods model that the prices of both goods are the same, the Friedman is optimal even when wage rates are different. If the production function has decreasing or increasing-returns-to-scale, then to have the optimality of the Friedman rule, wage rates should be equal.

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.