The potential importance of fiscal policy in influencing inflation has recently been highlighted, following Woodford (1998), under the heading of the ‘Fiscal Theory of the Price Level’ (FTPL). Some authors have suggested that this theory provides a rationale for the Pact for Stability and Growth as a necessary condition for the ECB pursuing a policy of price stability. In this paper, we relax the assumptions underpinning the FTPL by developing a two country open economy model, where each country has overlapping generations of non-Ricardian consumers who supply labour to imperfectly competitive firms which can only change their prices infrequently. We examine the case where the two countries have formed a monetary union, but where the fiscal authorities remain independent. We show that the fiscal response required to ensure solvency is greater when consumers are not infinitely lived, and that although this allows for some compensating behaviour between governments, in general, both fiscal policies must remain solvent if the ECB is to aggressively target inflation. We also show that the monetary authority can abandon its active targeting of inflation to ensure the solvency of at most one fiscal authority. Any other combination of policies will either result in price level indeterminacy and/or indefinite transfers of wealth between the two economies. Finally, in a series of simulations we show that fiscal shocks have limited impact on output and inflation provided the fiscal authorities meet the (weak) requirements of fiscal solvency. However, when monetary policy is forced to abandon its active targeting of inflation, then fiscal shocks have a much greater impact on both output and inflation.
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Paper provided by Department of Economics, University of Glasgow in its series Working Papers with number
2001_15.
Find related papers by JEL classification: E10 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - General Aggregative Models - - - General 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
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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.:
John H. Cochrane, 1999.
"A Frictionless View of U.S. Inflation,"
NBER Chapters,
in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 1998, volume 13, pages 323-421
National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
[Downloadable!]
Jordi Gali & Mark Gertler & J. David Lopez-Salido, 2001.
"European Inflation Dynamics,"
NBER Working Papers
8218, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
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