The paper analyzes the interactions between monetary and fiscal policies. Its emphasis is on a monetary union; one in which (some of) the governments are excessively ambitious. In contrast to conventional games, our novel game theoretic framework allows for stochastic timing of policy actions. The fact that moves occur with some ex-ante probability distribution (rather than certainty every period) enables us to model various degrees of fiscal rigidity and indiscipline that are heterogeneous across the member countries. We examine a number of specifications in discrete and continuous time, such as the widely-used Calvo (1983) timing, as well as a fully general probability distribution of the timing of policy actions. We derive the necessary and sufficient degree of monetary commitment that eliminates socially inferior (subgame perfect Nash) equilibria. This degree is shown to be increasing in (i) the degree of fiscal rigidity of each member country, (ii) their relative economic size, (iii) the structure of the economy (that determines eg inflation and output variability costs), and (iv) the degree of the central banker's impatience. Interestingly, such a strong monetary commitment - interpretable as a sufficiently explicit numerical inflation target - does not only ensure high credibility of the central bank, but it also indirectly "disciplines" the fiscal policymaker(s). As such, it leads to an improvement in monetary-fiscal policy cooperation and outcomes of both policies. We conclude by calibrating the model with European Monetary Union data. This exercise aims at providing some quantitative predictions regarding the required explicitness of the European Central Bank's commitment to an inflation target.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
file. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by Australian National University, Centre for Applied Macroeconomic Analysis in its series CAMA Working Papers with number
2008-22.
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: ().
Related research
Keywords:
Find related papers by JEL classification: E42 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Monetary Sytsems; Standards; Regimes; Government and the Monetary System E61 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Policy Objectives; Policy Designs and Consistency; Policy Coordination C70 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - General C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
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.:
Did you know? You can create a compilation of all publications of a group of people, say alumni of a program, your students or memers of an association.