IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/aecrev/v97y2007i2p290-294.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The McKenna Rule and UK World War I Finance

Author

Listed:
  • Shaun P. Vahey
  • James M. Nason

Abstract

The United Kingdom employed the McKenna rule to conduct fiscal policy during World War I (WWI) and the interwar period. Named for Reginald McKenna, Chancellor of the Exchequer (1915?16), the McKenna rule committed the United Kingdom to a path of debt retirement, which we show was forward-looking and smoothed in response to shocks to the real economy and tax rates. The McKenna rule was in the tradition of the ?English method? of war finance because the United Kingdom taxed capital to finance WWI. Higher rates of capital taxation also paid for debt retirement during and subsequent to WWI. The United Kingdom was motivated to implement the McKenna rule because of a desire to achieve a balance between fairness and equity. However, the McKenna rule adversely affected the real economy, according to a permanent income model. WWI and interwar U.K. data support the prediction that real activity is lower in response to higher past debt retirement rates.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • Shaun P. Vahey & James M. Nason, 2007. "The McKenna Rule and UK World War I Finance," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(2), pages 290-294, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:aea:aecrev:v:97:y:2007:i:2:p:290-294
    Note: DOI: 10.1257/aer.97.2.290
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/aer.97.2.290
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. George J. Hall & Thomas J. Sargent, 1997. "Accounting for the federal government's cost of funds," Economic Perspectives, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, vol. 21(Jul), pages 18-28.
    2. S. Rao Aiyagari & Albert Marcet & Thomas J. Sargent & Juha Seppala, 2002. "Optimal Taxation without State-Contingent Debt," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 110(6), pages 1220-1254, December.
    3. Ohanian, Lee E, 1997. "The Macroeconomic Effects of War Finance in the United States: World War II and the Korean War," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 87(1), pages 23-40, March.
    4. Shaun P. Vahey & James M. Nason, 2005. "Over the Top: U.K. World War I Finance and Its Aftermath," Computing in Economics and Finance 2005 22, Society for Computational Economics.
    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. James M. Nason & Shaun P. Vahey, 2012. "UK World War I and interwar data for business cycle and growth analysis," Cliometrica, Journal of Historical Economics and Econometric History, Association Française de Cliométrie (AFC), vol. 6(2), pages 115-142, May.
    2. Teupe, Sebastian, 2020. "Keynes, Inflation, and the Public Debt: "How to Pay for the War" as a Policy Prescription for Financial Repression?," Working Papers 16, German Research Foundation's Priority Programme 1859 "Experience and Expectation. Historical Foundations of Economic Behaviour", Humboldt University Berlin.

    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. Vasilev, Aleksandar, 2013. "Essays on Real Business Cycle Modeling and the Public Sector," EconStor Theses, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, number 130522, July.
    2. Martin Fernando M., 2012. "Government Policy Response to War-Expenditure Shocks," The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, De Gruyter, vol. 12(1), pages 1-40, July.
    3. Jochen Mankart & Rigas Oikonomou, 2017. "Household Search and the Aggregate Labour Market," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 84(4), pages 1735-1788.
    4. D’Erasmo, P. & Mendoza, E.G. & Zhang, J., 2016. "What is a Sustainable Public Debt?," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 2493-2597, Elsevier.
    5. Karantounias, Anastasios G., 2023. "Doubts about the model and optimal policy," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 210(C).
    6. Falko Juessen & Andreas Schabert, 2013. "Fiscal Policy, Sovereign Default, and Bailouts," Working Paper Series in Economics 67, University of Cologne, Department of Economics.
    7. Marcet, Albert & Scott, Andrew & Faraglia, Elisa, 2014. "Modelling Long Bonds - The Case of Optimal Fiscal Policy," CEPR Discussion Papers 9965, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    8. Marco Bassetto, 2009. "The Research Agenda: Marco Bassetto on the Quantitative Evaluation of Fiscal Policy Rules," EconomicDynamics Newsletter, Review of Economic Dynamics, vol. 10(2), April.
    9. Adam, Klaus & Billi, Roberto M., 2006. "Optimal Monetary Policy under Commitment with a Zero Bound on Nominal Interest Rates," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 38(7), pages 1877-1905, October.
    10. N. Gregory Mankiw & Ricardo Reis, 2002. "Sticky Information versus Sticky Prices: A Proposal to Replace the New Keynesian Phillips Curve," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 117(4), pages 1295-1328.
    11. Franck Portier, 2008. "Interprétation d'épisodes historiques à l'aide de modèles dynamiques stochastiques d'équilibre général," Economie & Prévision, La Documentation Française, vol. 0(4), pages 33-46.
    12. Gorostiaga, Arantza, 2003. "Should fiscal policy be different in a non-competitive framework?," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(6), pages 1311-1331, September.
    13. Christopher Sleet, 2004. "Optimal Taxation with Private Government Information," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 71(4), pages 1217-1239.
    14. Biljanovska, Nina & Vardoulakis, Alexandros P., 2019. "Capital taxation with heterogeneous discounting and collateralized borrowing," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 97-109.
    15. Stéphane Guibaud & Yves Nosbusch & Dimitri Vayanos, 2013. "Bond Market Clienteles, the Yield Curve, and the Optimal Maturity Structure of Government Debt," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 26(8), pages 1914-1961.
    16. James Costain and Michael Reiter, 2001. "Stabilization versus Insurance," Computing in Economics and Finance 2001 161, Society for Computational Economics.
    17. Minchung Hsu & Junsang Lee & Min Zhao, 2020. "Economic fluctuations, volatility changes and the role of government spending in China: A structural analysis," Pacific Economic Review, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(4), pages 512-538, October.
    18. Schmitt-Grohe, Stephanie & Uribe, Martin, 2004. "Optimal fiscal and monetary policy under imperfect competition," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 26(2), pages 183-209, June.
    19. Boris Chafwehé & Charles de Beauffort & Rigas Oikonomou, 2022. "Optimal Monetary Policy Rules in the Fiscal Theory of the Price Level," LIDAM Discussion Papers IRES 2022007, Université catholique de Louvain, Institut de Recherches Economiques et Sociales (IRES).
    20. Leith, Campbell & Wren-Lewis, Simon, 2011. "Discretionary policy in a monetary union with sovereign debt," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 55(1), pages 93-117, January.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E6 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook
    • N4 - Economic History - - Government, War, Law, International Relations, and Regulation

    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:aea:aecrev:v:97:y:2007:i:2:p:290-294. 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: Michael P. Albert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aeaaaea.html .

    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.