Using Vector Autoregressions on U.S. time series, the present paper documents the effects of fiscal policy on foreign trade: an increase in government spending significantly depreciates the nominal exchange rate, appreciates the terms of trade and increases net exports. Exposed to the same spending shock, a New Keynesian general equilibrium model is shown to match qualitatively the response of ...

Within the non-stochastic dynamic general equilibrium model framework this paper examines the implications of alternative fiscal consolidation programs for small open economy. The calibrated model enables realistically quantify the impact of the deficit financing and fiscal consolidation on consumption and saving of households, investment of firms and thereby on the capital stock and real inter...

Previous analyses of population aging mainly focused on the social security implications of the aging trend. This paper addresses aging in an open economy framework with two regions that have politically responsive fiscal policy regarding education finance. Demographic shocks start an economic growth process but results are sensitive to a critical parameter in the model that indicates return to...

This paper considers an endogenous growth model with productive government spending in which overlapping generations of agents vote sequentially on policy. With sequential majority voting, there is a multiplicity of politico-economic equilibria originating from self-fulfilling policy expectations. Some of these equilibria are Pareto-inefficient and there are endogenous cycles. A constitutional ...

Fiscal Union Consensus Design under the Risk of Autarky* Inspired by the current debate over the future of the monetary union in Europe, this paper provides a simple model for the determination of the conditions of survival of the common good, which requires the creation of an effective fiscal union. We highlight the importance of institutional design and varying decision weights for the enlarg...

The paper examines the interrelationship between fiscal and monetary policy in a two-country monetary union. The worst scenario occurs when an independent central bank (CB) sets the nominal interest rate and responds to rising government debt/GDP ratios by monetisation. The result is high inflation, high debt/GDP ratios and a large public sector. Government debt and inflation are contained if t...

Schmitt-Grohé and Uribe (1997) demonstrate that a balanced-budget fiscal policy can induce aggregate instability unrelated to economic fundamentals. The empirical relevance of this result has been challenged by subsequent studies. In this paper we show that such extrinsic instability is an empirically robust plausibility associated with a balanced-budget rule once endogenous capital utilization...

I present a tractable dynamic model of political economy where disagreements about the composition of public spending result in implementation of short-sighted policies. The relative price of investment to consumption is excessively large in equilibrium due to over-taxation. Investment rates are too low which slows down growth along the transition. In the long run, this results in output, consu...

We extend a standard overlapping-generations general-equilibrium model with idiosyncratic working ability shocks to design the optimal social security pension system. There are two main features in our approach. First, we keep track of individual social security wealth explicitly so that we can evaluate a wide range of policies, including “private accounts,” seamlessly. Second, we express our s...

The Keynesian multiplier effect is reinterpreted and several issues that may have misled assessments of the effect of fiscal spending are discussed. It is shown that even in the textbook Keynesian framework some transfer policy ‘reduces’ aggregate demand and that public works spending may completely crowd out private consumption. Useless public works are found to be equivalent to transfers alth...