The New Consensus Under Stress: The Financial Crisis and the Fiscal Policy Comeback

Abstract

From the 1980s, mainstream macroeconomic thinking experienced a strongconvergence in methodological assumptions and policy proposals for more than twodecades. This “New Macroeconomics Consensus” was characterized by the role playedby the monetary policy in macroeconomic adjustment. Fiscal policy was set aside; itshould only be concerned with keeping public debt in a stable path in order to ensurethe “economic fundamentals”. However, the need for active and unconventionalpolicy measures during the 2008 global economic crisis brought fiscal policy back tothe mainstream debate. This paper briefly describes this convergence, discussing therole it assigned for fiscal policy before the crisis, and then examines the issues the postcrisis debate concentrated on, showing how it differs from the previous mainstreamconception of fiscal policy. We suggest that mainstream limitations to deal with fiscalpolicy may have opened a window of opportunity for a broader review of its role as apolicy tool.