E62 - Fiscal Policy
-
-
(Optimal) Monetary Policy with and without Debt
How should policy be designed at high debt levels, when fiscal authorities have little room to adjust taxes? Assigning the monetary authority a role in achieving debt sustainability makes it less effective in stabilizing inflation and output. -
Labor Market Policies During an Epidemic
We study the labour market and welfare effects of expanding unemployment insurance benefits and introducing payroll subsidies during the COVID-19 pandemic. We find that both policies are complementary and are beneficial to different types of workers. Payroll subsidies preserve the employment of workers in highly productive jobs, while unemployment insurance replaces lost income for workers who experience inevitable job loss. -
Household indebtedness risks in the wake of COVID‑19
COVID-19 presents challenges for indebted households. We assess these by drawing parallels between pandemics and natural disasters. Taking into account the financial health of the household sector when the pandemic began, we run model simulations to illustrate how payment deferrals and the labour market recovery will affect mortgage defaults. -
Monetary Policy and Government Debt Dynamics Without Commitment
I show that maturity considerations affect the optimal conduct of monetary and fiscal policy during a period of government debt reduction. I consider a New Keynesian model and study a dynamic game of monetary and fiscal policy authorities without commitment, characterizing the incentives that drive the choice of interest rate. -
Non-Performing Loans, Fiscal Costs and Credit Expansion in China
This paper studies how the credit expansion policy pursued by the Chinese government in an effort to stimulate its economy in the post-crisis period affects bank–firm loan contracts and the macroeconomy. We build a structural model with financial frictions in which the optimal loan contract reflects the trade-off between leverage and the probability of default. -
Time-Consistent Management of a Liquidity Trap with Government Debt
This paper studies optimal discretionary monetary and fiscal policy when the lower bound on nominal interest rates is occasionally binding in a model with nominal rigidities and long-term government debt. At the lower bound it is optimal for the government to temporarily reduce debt. -
Sources of Borrowing and Fiscal Multipliers
This paper finds that debt-financed government spending multipliers vary considerably depending on the location of the debt buyer. In a sample of 33 countries, we find that government spending multipliers are larger when government purchases are financed by issuing debt to foreign investors (non-residents), compared with when government purchases are financed by issuing debt to home investors (residents). -
Government Spending Multipliers Under the Zero Lower Bound: Evidence from Japan
Using a rich data set on government spending forecasts in Japan, we provide new evidence on the effects of unexpected changes in government spending when the nominal interest rate is near the zero lower bound (ZLB). -
Risk Sharing in the Presence of a Public Good
This paper studies an economy where agents can spend resources on consuming a private good and on funding a public good. There is asymmetric information regarding agents’ relative preference for private versus public good consumption.