IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cpr/ceprdp/562.html

Unanticipated Inflation and Government Finance: The Case for an Independent Common Central Bank

Author

Listed:
  • van der Ploeg, Frederick

Abstract

This paper discuss the merits of an independent "EuroFed" within the context of a tax/seigniorage smoothing model for a monetary union. There is an incentive to use a surprise inflation tax to wipe out the real value of government debt and wage contracts because this allows a cut in distortionary taxes and boost employment and private consumption. If dependent central banks can pre-commit, there is no case for an independent EuroFed as this leads to a sub-optimal government revenue mix. If only an independent EuroFed can guarantee sufficient discipline, however, a case can be made for it over and above a monetary union with a non-cooperative or cooperative central bank. This case is stronger when the aversion to inflation is high, when the outstanding stock of nominal government debt is high, when the underground economy is insignificant and when there is little indexation. Even if all contracts are indexed, there is an incentive to create unanticipated inflation if money demand depends on expected inflation. If private agents are rational in their forecasts of inflation, however, government spending is financed through temporary bouts of taxation and inflation, and given that all contracts are indexed, no case for an independent central bank can be made. Competition between central banks of a monetary union induces excessive inflation, because each bank fails to internalize the externalities associated with appropriating too much seigniorage from the common central bank.

Suggested Citation

  • van der Ploeg, Frederick, 1991. "Unanticipated Inflation and Government Finance: The Case for an Independent Common Central Bank," CEPR Discussion Papers 562, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    • Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:562
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.cepr.org/active/publications/discussion_papers/dp.php?dpno=562
    Download Restriction: CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org
    ---><---

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

    for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Mourmouras, Iannis A. & Su, Dou-Ming, 1995. "Central bank independence, policy reforms and the credibility of public debt stabilizations," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 11(1), pages 189-204, March.
    2. Richard C. K. Burdekin & Clas Withborg & Thomas D. Willen, 1992. "A Monetary Constitution Case for an Independent European Central Bank," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 15(2), pages 231-249, March.
    3. Nicoleta Bărbuță-Mișu & Tuna Can Güleç & Selim Duramaz & Florina Oana Virlanuta, 2020. "Determinants of Dollarization of Savings in the Turkish Economy," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(15), pages 1-16, July.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    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:cpr:ceprdp:562. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cepr.org .

    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.