IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/journl/halshs-03052061.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Fiscal Theory of the Price Level in a Non-Ricardian Economy

Author

Listed:
  • Rym Aloui

    (GATE Lyon Saint-Étienne - Groupe d'Analyse et de Théorie Economique Lyon - Saint-Etienne - ENS de Lyon - École normale supérieure de Lyon - UL2 - Université Lumière - Lyon 2 - UCBL - Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1 - Université de Lyon - UJM - Université Jean Monnet - Saint-Étienne - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)

  • Michel Guillard

    (EPEE - Centre d'Etudes des Politiques Economiques - UEVE - Université d'Évry-Val-d'Essonne - Université Paris-Saclay)

Abstract

The Fiscal Theory of the Price Level (FTPL) establishes that the general level of prices is determined at equilibrium in order to satisfy the intertemporal government budget constraint. Importantly, in a representative agent framework, this theory requires that the present value of future primary surpluses has to be strictly positive. In a richer framework where the economy is non-Ricardian—an overlapping generations of infinitely-lived agents model—and where the monetary policy is constrained by the Zero Lower Bound (ZLB) on nominal interest rates, we show that the FTPL case arises endogenously, even when exogenous primary surpluses are null. In such a framework, a bubble-like component of government debt induces the price level determinacy by the fiscal policy and affects its equilibrium level.

Suggested Citation

  • Rym Aloui & Michel Guillard, 2020. "The Fiscal Theory of the Price Level in a Non-Ricardian Economy," Post-Print halshs-03052061, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:halshs-03052061
    DOI: 10.15609/annaeconstat2009.137.0065
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Barro, Robert J, 1974. "Are Government Bonds Net Wealth?," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 82(6), pages 1095-1117, Nov.-Dec..
    2. Marco Bassetto & Wei Cui, 2018. "The Fiscal Theory of the Price Level in an Environment of Low Interest Rates," 2018 Meeting Papers 574, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    3. Leeper, Eric M., 1991. "Equilibria under 'active' and 'passive' monetary and fiscal policies," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(1), pages 129-147, February.
    4. Uribe, Martin, 2006. "A fiscal theory of sovereign risk," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(8), pages 1857-1875, November.
    5. Thomas J. Sargent & Neil Wallace, 1984. "Some Unpleasant Monetarist Arithmetic," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Brian Griffiths & Geoffrey E. Wood (ed.), Monetarism in the United Kingdom, pages 15-41, Palgrave Macmillan.
    6. Woodford, Michael, 1994. "Monetary Policy and Price Level Determinacy in a Cash-in-Advance Economy," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 4(3), pages 345-380.
    7. Weil, Philippe, 1987. "Permanent budget deficits and inflation," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 20(2), pages 393-410, September.
    8. Bassetto, Marco & Cui, Wei, 2018. "The fiscal theory of the price level in a world of low interest rates," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 89(C), pages 5-22.
    9. Dirk Niepelt, 2004. "The Fiscal Myth of the Price Level," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 119(1), pages 277-300.
    10. Benhabib, Jess & Schmitt-Grohe, Stephanie & Uribe, Martin, 2001. "The Perils of Taylor Rules," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 96(1-2), pages 40-69, January.
    11. Sims, Christopher A, 1994. "A Simple Model for Study of the Determination of the Price Level and the Interaction of Monetary and Fiscal Policy," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 4(3), pages 381-399.
    12. Leith, Campbell & von Thadden, Leopold, 2008. "Monetary and fiscal policy interactions in a New Keynesian model with capital accumulation and non-Ricardian consumers," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 140(1), pages 279-313, May.
    13. Blanchard, Olivier Jean & Kahn, Charles M, 1980. "The Solution of Linear Difference Models under Rational Expectations," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 48(5), pages 1305-1311, July.
    14. Betty Daniel, 2007. "The Fiscal Theory of the Price Level and Initial Government Debt," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 10(2), pages 193-206, April.
    15. Buiter, Willem H., 1999. "The Fallacy of the Fiscal Theory of the Price Level," CEPR Discussion Papers 2205, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    16. Christopher A. Sims, 2013. "Paper Money," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 103(2), pages 563-584, April.
    17. Stephanie Schmitt-Grohe & Jess Benhabib & Martin Uribe, 2001. "Monetary Policy and Multiple Equilibria," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(1), pages 167-186, March.
    18. Weil, Philippe, 1989. "Overlapping families of infinitely-lived agents," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 38(2), pages 183-198, March.
    19. Jean-Pascal Benassy, 2000. "Price Level Determinacy under a Pure Interest Rate Peg," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 3(1), pages 194-211, January.
    20. Cushing, Matthew J., 1999. "The indeterminacy of prices under interest rate pegging: The non-Ricardian case," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 44(1), pages 131-148, August.
    21. Rao Aiyagari, S. & Gertler, Mark, 1985. "The backing of government bonds and monetarism," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(1), pages 19-44, July.
    22. Cochrane, John H., 2005. "Money as stock," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(3), pages 501-528, April.
    23. Tirole, Jean, 1985. "Asset Bubbles and Overlapping Generations," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 53(6), pages 1499-1528, November.
    24. Taylor, John B., 1993. "Discretion versus policy rules in practice," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(1), pages 195-214, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jaka Sriyana & Jiyao Joanna Ge, 2019. "Asymmetric responses of fiscal policy to the inflation rate in Indonesia," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 39(3), pages 1701-1713.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Rym Aloui & Michel Guillard, 2009. "A Simple “Public Debt-Deflation” Theory: Leeper revisited," Documents de recherche 09-11, Centre d'Études des Politiques Économiques (EPEE), Université d'Evry Val d'Essonne.
    2. Jean‐Pascal Bénassy, 2009. "Interest rate rules and global determinacy: An alternative to the Taylor principle," International Journal of Economic Theory, The International Society for Economic Theory, vol. 5(4), pages 359-374, December.
    3. Andreas Schabert & Leopold Von Thadden, 2009. "Distortionary Taxation, Debt, and the Price Level," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 41(1), pages 159-188, February.
    4. Roger E.A. Farmer & Pawel Zabczyk, 2019. "Monetary and Fiscal Policy When People Have Finite Lives," NBER Working Papers 25445, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Jérôme Creel & Henri Sterdyniak, 2001. "La théorie budgétaire du niveau des prix, un bilan critique," Revue d'économie politique, Dalloz, vol. 111(6), pages 909-939.
    6. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/5122 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Buiter, Willem H. & Sibert, Anne C., 2018. "The fallacy of the fiscal theory of the price level: One last time," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020), Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel), vol. 12, pages 1-56.
    8. Andreas Schabert, 2006. "Central Bank Instruments, Fiscal Policy Regimes, and the Requirements for Equilibrium Determinacy," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 9(4), pages 742-762, October.
    9. António Afonso, 2002. "Disturbing the Fiscal Theory of the Price Level: Can it Fit the EU-15," Working Papers Department of Economics 2002/01, ISEG - Lisbon School of Economics and Management, Department of Economics, Universidade de Lisboa.
    10. Mr. Roger Farmer & Pawel Zabczyk, 2019. "A Requiem for the Fiscal Theory of the Price Level," IMF Working Papers 2019/219, International Monetary Fund.
    11. George-Marios Angeletos & Chen Lian, 2021. "Determinacy without the Taylor Principle," NBER Working Papers 28881, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Begona Dominguez & Pedro Gomis-Porqueras, 2019. "The effects of secondary markets for government bonds on inflation dynamics," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 32, pages 249-273, April.
    13. Leith, Campbell & von Thadden, Leopold, 2008. "Monetary and fiscal policy interactions in a New Keynesian model with capital accumulation and non-Ricardian consumers," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 140(1), pages 279-313, May.
    14. Katagiri, Mitsuru & Konishi, Hideki & Ueda, Kozo, 2020. "Aging and deflation from a fiscal perspective," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 111(C), pages 1-15.
    15. repec:hal:wpspec:info:hdl:2441/5122 is not listed on IDEAS
    16. Leeper, E.M. & Leith, C., 2016. "Understanding Inflation as a Joint Monetary–Fiscal Phenomenon," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 2305-2415, Elsevier.
    17. Canzoneri, Matthew & Cumby, Robert & Diba, Behzad, 2010. "The Interaction Between Monetary and Fiscal Policy," Handbook of Monetary Economics, in: Benjamin M. Friedman & Michael Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Monetary Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 17, pages 935-999, Elsevier.
    18. Jukka Railavo, 2004. "Stability consequences of fiscal policy rules," Macroeconomics 0404020, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    19. repec:spo:wpecon:info:hdl:2441/5122 is not listed on IDEAS
    20. Christian A. Stoltenberg, 2012. "Real Balance Effects, Timing, and Equilibrium Determination," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 44(5), pages 981-994, August.
    21. Óscar J. Arce, 2005. "Reflections on fiscalist divergent price-paths," Working Papers 0533, Banco de España.
    22. Elmendorf, Douglas W. & Gregory Mankiw, N., 1999. "Government debt," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & M. Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 25, pages 1615-1669, Elsevier.
    23. Mengus, Eric & Barthélemy, Jean & Plantin, Guillaume, 2021. "The Central Bank, the Treasury, or the Market: Which One Determines the Price Level?," CEPR Discussion Papers 16679, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Public Debt; Monetary and Fiscal Rules; Fiscal Theory of the Price Level; Zero Lower Bound; Deflation; Liquidity Trap; Wealth Effects;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • 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; Treasury Policy
    • E52 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Monetary Policy

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hal:journl:halshs-03052061. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.