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Optimal Fiscal and Monetary Policy with Sticky Wages and Sticky Prices

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Author Info
Sanjay K. Chugh (Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve)
Abstract

We determine the optimal degree of price inflation volatility when nominal wages are sticky and the government uses state-contingent inflation to finance government spending. We address this question in a well-understood Ramsey model of fiscal and monetary policy, in which the benevolent planner has access to labor income taxes, nominally risk-free debt, and money creation. Our main result is that sticky wages alone make price stability optimal in the face of shocks to the government budget, to a degree quantitatively similar as sticky prices alone. Key for our results is an equilibrium restriction between nominal price inflation and nominal wage inflation that holds trivially in a Ramsey model featuring only sticky prices. Our results thus show that when nominal wages are sticky, setting real wages as close as possible to their efficient path is a more important goal of optimal monetary policy than is financing innovations in the government budget via state-contingent inflation. A second important result is that the nominal interest rate can be used to indirectly tax the rents of monopolistic labor suppliers. Taken together, our results uncover features of Ramsey fiscal and monetary policy in the presence of a type of labor market imperfection that is widely-believed to be important. (Copyright: Elsevier)

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File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.red.2006.07.001
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Article provided by Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics in its journal Review of Economic Dynamics.

Volume (Year): 9 (2006)
Issue (Month): 4 (October)
Pages: 683-714
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Handle: RePEc:red:issued:05-136

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Related research
Keywords: Optimal fiscal and monetary policy Sticky wages Sticky prices Friedman Rule Ramsey problem

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Find related papers by JEL classification:
E50 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - General
E61 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Policy Objectives; Policy Designs and Consistency; Policy Coordination
E63 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Comparative or Joint Analysis of Fiscal and Monetary Policy; Stabilization

References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:

  1. Lucas, Robert Jr. & Stokey, Nancy L., 1983. "Optimal fiscal and monetary policy in an economy without capital," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 12(1), pages 55-93. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  2. David M. Arseneau & Sanjay K. Chugh, 2006. "Ramsey Meets Hosios: The Optimal Capital Tax and Labor Market Efficiency," Computing in Economics and Finance 2006 222, Society for Computational Economics.
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  3. Siu, Henry E., 2004. "Optimal fiscal and monetary policy with sticky prices," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(3), pages 575-607, April. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  4. Schmitt-Grohe, Stephanie & Uribe, Martin, 2004. "Optimal fiscal and monetary policy under sticky prices," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 114(2), pages 198-230, February. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  5. David Domeij, 2005. "Optimal Capital Taxation and Labor Market Search," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 8(3), pages 623-650, July. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  6. Narayana R. Kocherlakota, 2005. "Optimal Monetary Policy: What We Know And What We Don'T Know," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 46(2), pages 715-729, 05. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  7. Erceg, Christopher J. & Henderson, Dale W. & Levin, Andrew T., 2000. "Optimal monetary policy with staggered wage and price contracts," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(2), pages 281-313, October. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  8. Aubhik Khan & Robert G. King & Alexander L. Wolman, 2003. "Optimal Monetary Policy," Review of Economic Studies, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 70(4), pages 825-860, October. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  9. Schmitt-Grohe, Stephanie & Uribe, Martin, 2004. "Solving dynamic general equilibrium models using a second-order approximation to the policy function," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 28(4), pages 755-775, January. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  10. Schmitt-Grohe, Stephanie & Uribe, Martin, 2004. "Optimal fiscal and monetary policy under imperfect competition," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 26(2), pages 183-209, June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  11. Lawrence J. Christiano, Martin Eichenbaum, and Charles L. Evans, 2005. "Nominal Rigidities and the Dynamic Effects of a Shock to Monetary Policy," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 113(1), pages 1-45, February.
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Cited by:
(explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)

  1. David M. Arseneau & Sanjay K. Chugh, 2006. "Ramsey meets Hosios: the optimal capital tax and labor market efficiency," International Finance Discussion Papers 870, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.). [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  2. David M. Arseneau & Sanjay K. Chugh, 2008. "Optimal fiscal and monetary policy in customer markets," International Finance Discussion Papers 919, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.). [Downloadable!]
  3. David M. Arseneau & Sanjay K. Chugh, 2007. "Bargaining, fairness, and price rigidity in a DSGE environment," International Finance Discussion Papers 900, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.). [Downloadable!]
  4. S. Boragan Aruoba & Sanjay K. Chugh, 2006. "Optimal fiscal and monetary policy when money is essential," International Finance Discussion Papers 880, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.). [Downloadable!]
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