IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/18877.html

Fiscal Limits and Monetary Policy

Author

Listed:
  • Eric M. Leeper

Abstract

Every economy faces a "fiscal limit" that delivers the maximum government debt-GDP ratio that can be sustained without appreciable risk of default or higher inflation. But governments in advanced economies issue substantial nominal debt and nominal debt is a commitment to repay in nominal units. When such economies are approaching their fiscal limits, debt can be devalued through higher current and future inflation rates. The paper develops a simple bond market supply-demand apparatus to explain how fiscal policy can be a source of inflation, while monetary policy merely determines the timing of inflation.

Suggested Citation

  • Eric M. Leeper, 2013. "Fiscal Limits and Monetary Policy," NBER Working Papers 18877, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:18877
    Note: EFG
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w18877.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Congressional Budget Office, 2010. "The Long-Term Budget Outlook," Reports 21546, Congressional Budget Office.
    2. Bi, Huixin, 2012. "Sovereign default risk premia, fiscal limits, and fiscal policy," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 56(3), pages 389-410.
    3. Woodford, Michael, 1995. "Price-level determinacy without control of a monetary aggregate," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 43(1), pages 1-46, December.
    4. Troy Davig & Eric M. Leeper, 2007. "Fluctuating Macro Policies and the Fiscal Theory," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2006, Volume 21, pages 247-316, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Eusepi, Stefano & Preston, Bruce, 2011. "Learning the fiscal theory of the price level: Some consequences of debt-management policy," Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, Elsevier, vol. 25(4), pages 358-379.
    6. Hess Chung & Troy Davig & Eric M. Leeper, 2007. "Monetary and Fiscal Policy Switching," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 39(4), pages 809-842, June.
    7. Davig, Troy & Leeper, Eric M. & Walker, Todd B., 2010. ""Unfunded liabilities" and uncertain fiscal financing," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 57(5), pages 600-619, July.
    8. 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.
    9. Thomas J. Sargent, 2012. "Nobel Lecture: United States Then, Europe Now," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 120(1), pages 1-40.
    10. Francesco Bianchi, 2013. "Regime Switches, Agents' Beliefs, and Post-World War II U.S. Macroeconomic Dynamics," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 80(2), pages 463-490.
    11. Stephen Cecchetti & Madhusudan Mohanty & Fabrizio Zampolli, 2010. "The future of public debt: prospects and implications," BIS Working Papers 300, Bank for International Settlements.
    12. Willem H. Buiter, 2002. "The Fiscal Theory Of The Price Level: A Critique," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 112(481), pages 459-480, July.
    13. repec:cbo:report:215461 is not listed on IDEAS
    14. Trabandt, Mathias & Uhlig, Harald, 2011. "The Laffer curve revisited," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 58(4), pages 305-327.
    15. Congressional Budget Office, 2010. "The Long-Term Budget Outlook," Reports 21546, Congressional Budget Office.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Eric M. Leeper & Todd B. Walker, 2012. "Perceptions and Misperceptions of Fiscal Inflation," NBER Chapters, in: Fiscal Policy after the Financial Crisis, pages 255-299, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Eric M. Leeper, 2015. "Fiscal Analysis is Darned Hard," CAEPR Working Papers 2015-021, Center for Applied Economics and Policy Research, Department of Economics, Indiana University Bloomington.
    3. Richter, Alexander W., 2015. "Finite lifetimes, long-term debt and the fiscal limit," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 180-203.
    4. Eric M. Leeper, 2009. "Anchors Away: How Fiscal Policy Can Undermine the Taylor Principle," NBER Working Papers 15514, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Gliksberg, Baruch, "undated". "Solving Boundary Value Problems in the Fiscal Theory of the Price Level," Working Papers WP2013/2, University of Haifa, Department of Economics.
    6. Polito, Vito & Wickens, Mike, 2014. "Modelling the U.S. sovereign credit rating," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 202-218.
    7. Troy Davig & Eric M Leeper, 2011. "Temporarily Unstable Government Debt and Inflation," IMF Economic Review, Palgrave Macmillan;International Monetary Fund, vol. 59(2), pages 233-270, June.
    8. Eric M. Leeper, 2010. "Monetary science, fiscal alchemy," Proceedings - Economic Policy Symposium - Jackson Hole, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, pages 361-434.
    9. Óscar J. Arce, 2005. "Reflections on fiscalist divergent price-paths," Working Papers 0533, Banco de España.
    10. Pierre Aldama & Jérôme Creel, 2016. "Why fiscal regimes matter for fiscal sustainability analysis: an application to France," Sciences Po Economics Publications (main) hal-03459336, HAL.
    11. Dennis Wesselbaum, 2022. "Cheap Talk in a New Keynesian Model," Journal of Quantitative Economics, Springer;The Indian Econometric Society (TIES), vol. 20(3), pages 661-691, September.
    12. Wolf, Martin & Müller, Gernot & Kriwoluzky, Alexander, 2013. "Currency Risk in Currency Unions," CEPR Discussion Papers 9635, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    13. Eric M. Leeper, 2009. "Anchoring fiscal expectations," Reserve Bank of New Zealand Bulletin, Reserve Bank of New Zealand, vol. 72, pages 17-42, September.
    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. Aldama, Pierre & Creel, Jérôme, 2019. "Fiscal policy in the US: Sustainable after all?," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 81(C), pages 471-479.
    16. Fan, Jingwen & Minford, Patrick, 2009. "Can the Fiscal Theory of the price level explain UK inflation in the 1970s?," Cardiff Economics Working Papers E2009/26, Cardiff University, Cardiff Business School, Economics Section, revised Mar 2011.
    17. Francesco Bianchi & Leonardo Melosi, 2017. "Escaping the Great Recession," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 107(4), pages 1030-1058, April.
    18. Francesco Bianchi & Cosmin Ilut, 2017. "Monetary/Fiscal Policy Mix and Agent's Beliefs," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 26, pages 113-139, October.
    19. Matsuoka, Hideaki, 2015. "Fiscal limits and sovereign default risk in Japan," Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 13-30.
    20. Mackowiak, Bartosz, 2007. "Macroeconomic regime switches and speculative attacks," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 31(10), pages 3321-3347, October.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E31 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Price Level; Inflation; Deflation
    • E52 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Monetary Policy
    • E62 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Fiscal Policy; Modern Monetary Theory
    • 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

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:nbr:nberwo:18877. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.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.