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Deflationary Bubbles

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Author Info
Willem Buiter
Anne Sibert (Department of Economics, Mathematics & Statistics, Birkbeck)

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Abstract

We analyse deflationary bubbles in a model where money is the only financial asset. We show that such bubbles are consistent with the households transversality condition if and only if the nominal money stock is falling. Our results are in sharp contrast to those in several prominent contributions to the literature, where deflationary bubbles are ruled out by appealing to a non-standard transversality condition, originally due to Brock ([4], [5]). This condition, which we dub the GABOR condition, states that the consumer must be indifferent between reducing his money holdings by one unit and leaving them unchanged and enjoying the discounted present value of the marginal utility of that unit of money forever. We show that the GABOR condition is not part of the necessary and sufficient conditions for household optimality nor is it sufficient to rule out deflationary bubbles. Moreover, it rules out Friedman's optimal quantity of money equilibrium and, when the nominal money stock is falling, it rules out deflationary bubbles that are consistent with household optimality. We also consider economies with real and nominal government debt and small open economies where the government can lend to and borrow from abroad. In these cases, deflationary bubbles may be possible, even when the nominal money stock is rising. Their existence is shown to depend on the rules governing the issuance of government debt.

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Paper provided by Birkbeck, Department of Economics, Mathematics & Statistics in its series Birkbeck Working Papers in Economics and Finance with number 0409.

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Date of creation: Nov 2004
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Handle: RePEc:bbk:bbkefp:0409

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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. Willem H. Buiter, 2003. "Helicopter Money: Irredeemable Fiat Money and the Liquidity Trap," NBER Working Papers 10163, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  2. Buiter, Willem H, 2004. "A Small Corner of Intertemporal Public Finance - New Developments in Monetary Economics: Two Ghosts, Two Eccentricities, a Fallacy, a Mirage and a Mythos," CEPR Discussion Papers 4407, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  3. Paul R. Krugman, 1998. "It's Baaack: Japan's Slump and the Return of the Liquidity Trap," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 29(1998-2), pages 137-206. [Downloadable!]
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  5. Bernanke, Ben S, 1983. "Nonmonetary Effects of the Financial Crisis in Propagation of the Great Depression," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 73(3), pages 257-76, June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  6. Hamilton, James D & Flavin, Marjorie A, 1986. "On the Limitations of Government Borrowing: A Framework for EmpiricalTesting," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(4), pages 808-19, September. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  7. Schabert, Andreas, 2005. "Identifying monetary policy shocks with changes in open market operations," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 49(3), pages 561-577, April. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  8. Brock, William A., 1975. "A simple perfect foresight monetary model," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 1(2), pages 133-150, April. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  11. Bennett T. McCallum, 1983. "On Non-Uniqueness in Rational Expectations Models: An Attempt at Perspective," NBER Working Papers 0684, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  14. Brock, William A, 1974. "Money and Growth: The Case of Long Run Perfect Foresight," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 15(3), pages 750-77, October. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  16. Weil, Philippe, 1991. "Is Money Net Wealth?," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 32(1), pages 37-53, February. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  18. Jess Benhabib & Stephanie Schmitt-Grohe & Martin Uribe, 2002. "Avoiding Liquidity Traps," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 110(3), pages 535-563, June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  19. Stephen J. Turnovsky, 1997. "International Macroeconomic Dynamics," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262201119.
  20. Smith, Gregor W & Zin, Stanley E, 1991. "Persistent Deficits and the Market Value of Government Debt," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 6(1), pages 31-44, Jan.-Marc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  21. Gray, Jo Anna, 1984. "Dynamic Instability in Rational Expectations Models: An Attempt to Clarify," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 25(1), pages 93-122, February. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  22. Matthew B. Canzoneri & Robert E. Cumby & Behzad T. Diba, 2001. "Is the Price Level Determined by the Needs of Fiscal Solvency?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(5), pages 1221-1238, December. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  23. Feenstra, Robert C., 1986. "Functional equivalence between liquidity costs and the utility of money," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(2), pages 271-291, March. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  24. Stephen J. Turnovsky, 2000. "Methods of Macroeconomic Dynamics, 2nd Edition," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 2, volume 1, number 0262201232.
  25. Jha, Sailesh K. & Wang, Ping & Yip, Chong K., 2002. "Dynamics in a transactions-based monetary growth model," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 26(4), pages 611-635, April. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  26. Lucas, Robert E, Jr, 1980. "Equilibrium in a Pure Currency Economy," Economic Inquiry, Oxford University Press, vol. 18(2), pages 203-20, April.
  27. Trehan, Bharat & Walsh, Carl E., 1988. "Common trends, the government's budget constraint, and revenue smoothing," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 12(2-3), pages 425-444. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  28. Cohen, Daniel, 1985. "Inflation, wealth and interest rates in an intertemporal optimizing model," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(1), pages 73-85, July. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  29. Obstfeld, Maurice & Rogoff, Kenneth, 1986. "Ruling out divergent speculative bubbles," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(3), pages 349-362, May. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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(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. Willem H. Buiter, 2003. "Helicopter Money: Irredeemable Fiat Money and the Liquidity Trap," NBER Working Papers 10163, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  2. Óscar J. Arce, 2005. "Reflections on fiscalist divergent price-paths," Banco de España Working Papers 0533, Banco de España. [Downloadable!]
  3. Willem H. Buiter, 2004. "The Elusive Welfare Economics of Price Stability as a Monetary Policy Objective: Should New Keynesian Central Bankers Pursue Price Stability?," NBER Working Papers 10848, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  4. Willem H. Buiter, 2006. "The elusive welfare economics of price stability as a monetary policy objective - why New Keynesian central bankers should validate core inflation," Working Paper Series 609, European Central Bank. [Downloadable!]
  5. Buiter, Willem H, 2007. "Is Numérairology the Future of Monetary Economics? Unbundling Numéraire and Medium of Exchange Through a Virtual Currency and a Shadow Exchange Rate," CEPR Discussion Papers 6099, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  6. Willem Buiter, 2007. "Is Numérairology the Future of Monetary Economics?," Open Economies Review, Springer, vol. 18(2), pages 127-156, April. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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