In standard macroeconomic models, equilibrium stability and uniqueness require monetary policy to actively target inflation and fiscal policy to ensure long-run debt sustainability. We show analytically that these requirements change, and depend on the cyclicality of fiscal policy, when government debt is risky. In that case, budget deficits raise interest rates and crowd out consumption. Consequently, countercyclical fiscal policies reduce the parameter space supporting stable and unique equilibria and are feasible only if complemented with more aggressive debt consolidation and/or active monetary policy. Stability is more easily achieved, however, under procyclical fiscal policies.JEL codes: E52, E62, E63 Keywords: fiscal-monetary policy interactions, equilibrium stability and uniqueness, sovereign risk premia, countercyclical and procyclical fiscal policy.DURING THE GREAT RECESSION, GOVERNMENTS worldwide engaged in massive fiscal expansions to keep their economies afloat, especially since monetary instruments have been effectively depleted. In some cases, these
We find that past major pandemics have led to a significant decline in trend inflation in Europe that lasts for more than a decade. The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on trend inflation could, however, be different this time around.
We estimate the effects of government spending shocks during prolonged episodes of low interest rates, which we consider as proxy for the effective lower bound (ELB). Using a panel VAR model for 17 advanced countries, we find that both the government consumption and investment multipliers are significantly higher, and exceed unity, when interest rates are persistently low. Distinguishing between construction- and equipment-related government investments, we find that only the former raises output by significantly more when the ELB binds. This result can be explained by existing New Keynesian models featuring time-to-build constraints on government investment.
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