IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pri/econom/2022-11.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Optimal Fiscal and Monetary Policy with Distorting Taxes

Author

Listed:
  • Christopher A. Sims

    (Princeton University)

Abstract

When the interest rate on government debt is low enough, it becomes possible to roll it over indefinitely, never taxing to retire it, without producing a growing debt to GDP ratio. This has been called a situation with zero "fiscal cost" to debt. But when low interest on debt arises from its providing liquidity services, zero fiscal cost is equivalent to finance through seigniorage. Some finance through seigniorage is generally optimal, however, despite results in the literature seeming to show that this is not so.

Suggested Citation

  • Christopher A. Sims, 2022. "Optimal Fiscal and Monetary Policy with Distorting Taxes," Working Papers 2022-11, Princeton University. Economics Department..
    • Handle: RePEc:pri:econom:2022-11
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://gceps.princeton.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/wp256_Sims_InflTax_rev_Feb-2022.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Arvind Krishnamurthy & Annette Vissing-Jorgensen, 2012. "The Aggregate Demand for Treasury Debt," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 120(2), pages 233-267.
    2. Chari, V. V. & Christiano, Lawrence J. & Kehoe, Patrick J., 1996. "Optimality of the Friedman rule in economies with distorting taxes," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 37(2-3), pages 203-223, April.
    3. Chari, V.V. & Kehoe, Patrick J., 1999. "Optimal fiscal and monetary policy," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & M. Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 26, pages 1671-1745, Elsevier.
    4. Olivier Blanchard, 2019. "Public Debt and Low Interest Rates," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 109(4), pages 1197-1229, April.
    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. Pierpaolo Benigno, 2023. "The International Supply of Reserve Currency," Diskussionsschriften dp2313, Universitaet Bern, Departement Volkswirtschaft.
    2. Debrun, Xavier & Masuch, Klaus & Ferrero, Guiseppe & Vansteenkiste, Isabel & Ferdinandusse, Marien & von Thadden, Leopold & Hauptmeier, Sebastian & Alloza, Mario & Derouen, Chloé & Bańkowski, Krzyszto, 2021. "Monetary-fiscal policy interactions in the euro area," Occasional Paper Series 273, European Central Bank.

    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. Christopher A. Sims, 2021. "Optimal Fiscal and Monetary Policy with Distorting Taxes," Working Papers 2021-6, Princeton University. Economics Department..
    2. Marco Bassetto & Wei Cui, 2024. "A Ramsey Theory of Financial Distortions," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 132(8), pages 2612-2654.
    3. George-Marios Angeletos & Fabrice Collard & Harris Dellas, 2023. "Public Debt as Private Liquidity: Optimal Policy," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 131(11), pages 3233-3264.
    4. University of Notre Dame & Christopher Waller, 2008. "Dynamic Taxation, Private Information and Money," 2008 Meeting Papers 896, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    5. Nikolay Arefiev, 2008. "The Inconsistency Puzzle Resolved: an Omitted Variable," EERI Research Paper Series EERI_RP_2008_15, Economics and Econometrics Research Institute (EERI), Brussels.
    6. Zhengyang Jiang & Hanno Lustig & Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh & Mindy Z. Xiaolan, 2020. "Manufacturing Risk-free Government Debt," NBER Working Papers 27786, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Zhengyang Jiang & Hanno Lustig & Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh & Mindy Z. Xiaolan, 2024. "The U.S. Public Debt Valuation Puzzle," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 92(4), pages 1309-1347, July.
    8. Takahashi, Yuta & Takayama, Naoki, 2022. "On the Relationship Between Interest Rate Policy & Debt Sustainability," Discussion Paper Series 731, Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University.
    9. Stefania Albanesi, "undated". "The Time Consistency of Optimal Monetary Policy with Heterogeneous Agents," Working Papers 207, IGIER (Innocenzo Gasparini Institute for Economic Research), Bocconi University.
    10. Alexandre Cunha, 2008. "The optimality of the Friedman rule when some distorting taxes are exogenous," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 35(2), pages 267-291, May.
    11. Uhlig, Harald, 2000. "Should We Be Afraid of Friedman's Rule?," Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, Elsevier, vol. 14(4), pages 261-303, December.
    12. Kreamer, Jonathan, 2022. "Financial intermediation and the supply of liquidity," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 61(C).
    13. Gapen Michael T. & Cosimano Thomas F., 2005. "Solving Ramsey Problems with Nonlinear Projection Methods," Studies in Nonlinear Dynamics & Econometrics, De Gruyter, vol. 9(2), pages 1-38, June.
    14. Pedro Gomis‐Porqueras & Christopher Waller, 2022. "Optimal Taxes under Private Information: The Role of Inflation," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 54(7), pages 1941-1969, October.
    15. Constantino Hevia & Juan Pablo Nicolini, 2013. "Optimal Devaluations," IMF Economic Review, Palgrave Macmillan;International Monetary Fund, vol. 61(1), pages 22-51, April.
    16. Leeper, Eric M. & Zhou, Xuan, 2021. "Inflation’s role in optimal monetary-fiscal policy," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 124(C), pages 1-18.
    17. Plantin, Guillaume & Barthélemy, Jean & Mengus, Eric, 2019. "Public Liquidity Demand and Central Bank Independence," CEPR Discussion Papers 14160, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    18. Markus K. Brunnermeier & Sebastian, Sannikov, Yuliy Merkel & Sebastian Merkel, 2021. "Debt as Safe Asset," CESifo Working Paper Series 9500, CESifo.
    19. Van Nieuwerburgh, Stijn & Elenev, Vadim & Landvoigt, Tim & Shultz, Patrick, 2021. "Can Monetary Policy Create Fiscal Capacity?," CEPR Discussion Papers 16414, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    20. Pfeiffer, Philipp & Roeger, Werner & Vogel, Lukas, 2021. "Optimal fiscal policy with low interest rates for government debt," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 132(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    monetary policy; fiscal policy;

    JEL classification:

    • 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

    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:pri:econom:2022-11. 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: Bobray Bordelon (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deprius.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.