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Working Paper
Inside-outside money competition
We study how competition from privately supplied currency substitutes affects monetary equilibria. Whenever currency is inefficiently provided, inside money competition plays a disciplinary role by providing an upper bound on equilibrium inflation rates. Furthermore, if "inside monies" can be produced at a sufficiently low cost, outside money is driven out of circulation. Whenever a 'benevolent' government can commit to its fiscal policy, sequential monetary policy is efficient and inside money competition plays no role.
Report
Self-Fulfilling Debt Crises with Long Stagnations
We assess the quantitative relevance of expectations-driven sovereign debt crises, focusing on the southern European crisis of the early 2010s and the Argentine default of 2001. The source of multiplicity is the one in Calvo (1988). Crucial for multiplicity is an output process characterized by long periods of either high growth or stagnation, which we estimate using data for these countries. We find that expectations-driven debt crises are quantitatively relevant but state dependent, as they occur only during periods of stagnation. Expectations, and how they respond to policy, are the major ...
Report
Optimal Capital Taxation Revisited
We revisit the question of how capital should be taxed. We allow for a rich set of tax instruments that consists of taxes widely used in practice, including consumption, dividend, capital, and labor income taxes. We restrict policies to respect promises that the government has made in the previous period regarding the current value of wealth. We show that capital should not be taxed if households have preferences that are standard in the macroeconomics literature. We show that Ramsey outcomes that must respect such promises are time consistent. We show that the presumption in the literature ...
Report
Optimal fiscal and monetary policy: equivalence results
In this article, we analyze the implications of price-setting restrictions for the conduct of cyclical fiscal and monetary policy. We consider standard monetary economies that differ in the price-setting restrictions imposed on the firms. We show that, independently of the degree or type of price stickiness, it is possible to implement the same efficient set of allocations and that each allocation in that set is implemented with policies that are also independent of the price stickiness. In this sense, environments with different price-setting restrictions are equivalent.
Discussion Paper
Electronic money: the end of inflation?
We study economies where government currency and electronic money, drawn from interest bearing deposits in private financial intermediary institutions, are full substitutes. We analyze the impact of competition on policy outcomes under different assumptions regarding: the objectives of the central bank, the ability of the monetary authorities to commit to future policies, and the legal restrictions in the form of reserve requirements on financial intermediaries. Electronic money competition can discipline a revenue maximizing government and result in lower equilibrium inflation rates, even ...
Discussion Paper
The optimal inflation tax
We determine the second best rule for the inflation tax in monetary general equilibrium models where money is dominated in rate of return. The results in the literature are ambiguous and inconsistent across different monetary environments. We compare the derived optimal inflation tax solutions across the different environments and find that Friedman's policy recommendation of a zero nominal interest rate is the right one.
Report
Appendix for: Optimal Cooperative Taxation in the Global Economy
This appendix accompanies Staff Report 581: Optimal Cooperative Taxation in the Global Economy.
Report
Optimal Cooperative Taxation in the Global Economy
We use the Ramsey and Mirrlees approaches to study how fiscal and trade policy should be set cooperatively when governments must raise revenues with distorting taxes. Free trade and unrestricted capital mobility are optimal. Efficient outcomes can be implemented with taxes only on final consumption goods and labor income. We study alternative tax systems, showing that uniform taxation of household asset returns, and not taxing corporate income yields efficient outcomes. Border adjustments exempting exports from and including imports in the tax base are desirable. Destination and residence ...
Working Paper
Optimal fiscal and monetary policy: equivalence results
In this paper, we analyze the implications of price setting restrictions for the conduct of cyclical fiscal and monetary policy. We consider an environment with monopolistic competitive firms, a shopping time technology, prices set one period in advance, and government expenditures that must be financed with distortionary taxes. We show that the sets of (frontier) implementable allocations are the same independently of the degree of price stickiness. Furthermore, the sets of policies that decentralize each allocation are also the same except in the extreme cases of flexible and sticky prices, ...