Optimal Fiscal Stabilisation through Government Spending
Abstract
This paper examines under what conditions fiscal policy in the form of government spending should contribute to macroeconomic stabilisation. To this end optimal fiscal targeting rules minimising the microfounded social loss are examined in the following settings. Firstly, for the benchmark New Keynesian model, where monetary policy is unconstrained, a neutrality result for fiscal obtains: fiscal policy should not respond to any shocks. Secondly, if monetary policy is constrained to follow a Taylor rule, a stabilisation role for fiscal policy emerges. Fiscal policy should 'lean against' inflation and be countercyclical relative to output. Crucially, the Taylor principle is shown to remain the key requirement on policy to guarantee equilibrium determinacy. Thirdly, the fiscal targeting rule obtained under a Taylor rule is shown to be optimal, too, when policy is optimal but subject to monetary frictions. Thus, there is a stabilisation role for government spending under monetary frictions, changing the role of monetary and fiscal policy fundamentally.Download Info
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Paper provided by Economics Group, Nuffield College, University of Oxford in its series Economics Papers with number 2009-W14.Length: 34 pages
Date of creation: 13 Oct 2009
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:nuf:econwp:0914
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Web page: http://www.nuff.ox.ac.uk/economics/
Related research
Keywords: Monetary Policy; Fiscal Policy; Macroeconomic Stabilisation; Discretion; Dynamic General Equilibrium; Sticky Prices; Monetary Frictions; Equilibrium Determinacy;Other versions of this item:
- Fabian Eser, 2009. "Optimal Fiscal Stabilisation through Government Spending," Economics Series Working Papers 2009-W14, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
- E5 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit
- E6 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook
- C62 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Mathematical Methods; Programming Models; Mathematical and Simulation Modeling - - - Existence and Stability Conditions of Equilibrium
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
- NEP-ALL-2009-12-11 (All new papers)
- NEP-CBA-2009-12-11 (Central Banking)
- NEP-DGE-2009-12-11 (Dynamic General Equilibrium)
- NEP-MAC-2009-12-11 (Macroeconomics)
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Citations
Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.Cited by:
- Fabian Eser & Campbell Leith & Simon Wren-Lewis, 2009.
"When is monetary policy all we need?,"
Working Papers
2009_18, Business School - Economics, University of Glasgow.
- Leith, Campbell & Wren-Lewis, Simon, 2009. "When is Monetary Policy All we Need?," SIRE Discussion Papers 2009-25, Scottish Institute for Research in Economics (SIRE).
- Simon Wren-Lewis & Fabian Eser, 2009. "When is Monetary Policy All we Need?," Economics Series Working Papers 430, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
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