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Working Paper
Can structural reforms help Europe?
Structural reforms that increase competition in product and labor markets are often indicated as the main policy option available for peripheral Europe to regain competitiveness and boost output. We show that, in a crisis that pushes the nominal interest rate to its lower bound, these reforms do not support economic activity in the short run, and may well be contractionary. Absent the appropriate monetary stimulus, reforms fuel expectations of prolonged deation, increase the real interest rate, and depress aggregate demand. Our findings carry important implications for the current debate on ...
Report
Optimal monetary and fiscal policy under discretion in the New Keynesian model: a technical appendix to \\"Great Expectations and the End of the Depression\\"
This paper details the microfoundations of the model presented in Staff Report no. 234, "Great Expectations and the End of the Depression." It defines the Markov perfect equilibrium formally in the nonlinear model, discusses in some detail the approximation method used and the order of accuracy of this approximation, and gives proofs of two propositions not proved in Staff Report no. 234. In addition, this paper states a proposition that shows the equivalence between the linear quadratic approximation in Staff Report no. 234 and a first order approximation to the exact nonlinear ...
Report
Was the New Deal contractionary?
Can government policies that increase the monopoly power of firms and the militancy of unions increase output? This paper studies this question in a dynamic general equilibrium model with nominal frictions and shows that these policies are expansionary when certain "emergency" conditions apply. I argue that these emergency conditions-zero interest rates and deflation-were satisfied during the Great Depression in the United States. Therefore, the New Deal, which facilitated monopolies and union militancy, was expansionary, according to the model. This conclusion is contrary to the one reached ...
Report
Great expectations and the end of the depression
This paper argues that the U.S. economy's recovery from the Great Depression was driven by a shift in expectations brought about by the policy actions of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. On the monetary policy side, Roosevelt abolished the gold standard and-even more important-announced the policy objective of inflating the price level to pre-depression levels. On the fiscal policy side, Roosevelt expanded real and deficit spending. Together, these actions made his policy objective credible; they violated prevailing policy dogmas and introduced a policy regime change such as that ...
Report
The great escape? A quantitative evaluation of the Fed’s liquidity facilities
We introduce liquidity frictions into an otherwise standard DSGE model with nominal and real rigidities and ask: Can a shock to the liquidity of private paper lead to a collapse in short-term nominal interest rates and a recession like the one associated with the 2008 U.S. financial crisis? Once the nominal interest rate reaches the zero bound, what are the effects of interventions in which the government provides liquidity in exchange for illiquid private paper? We find that the effects of the liquidity shock can be large, and we show some numerical examples in which the liquidity facilities ...
Report
The inflation-output trade-off revisited
A rich literature from the 1970s shows that as inflation expectations become more and more ingrained, monetary policy loses its stimulative effect. In the extreme, with perfectly anticipated inflation, there is no trade-off between inflation and output. A recent literature on the interest-rate zero lower bound, however, suggests there may be some benefits from anticipated inflation when he economy is in a liquidity trap. In this paper, we reconcile these two views by showing that while it is true, at positive interest rates, that inflation loses its stimulative effects as it becomes better ...
Report
Deficits, public debt dynamics, and tax and spending multipliers
Cutting government spending on goods and services increases the budget deficit if the nominal interest rate is close to zero. This is the message of a simple but standard New Keynesian DSGE model calibrated with Bayesian methods. The cut in spending reduces output and thus?holding rates for labor and sales taxes constant?reduces revenues by even more than what is saved by the spending cut. Similarly, increasing sales taxes can increase the budget deficit rather than reduce it. Both results suggest limitations of ?austerity measures? in low interest rate economies to cut budget deficits. ...
Report
What fiscal policy is effective at zero interest rates?
Tax cuts can deepen a recession if the short-term nominal interest rate is zero, according to a standard New Keynesian business cycle model. An example of a contractionary tax cut is a reduction in taxes on wages. This tax cut deepens a recession because it increases deflationary pressures. Another example is a cut in capital taxes. This tax cut deepens a recession because it encourages people to save instead of spend at a time when more spending is needed. Fiscal policies aimed directly at stimulating aggregate demand work better. These policies include 1) a temporary increase in government ...
Report
A Bayesian approach to estimating tax and spending multipliers
This paper outlines a simple Bayesian methodology for estimating tax and spending multipliers in a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model. After forming priors about the parameters of the model and the relevant shock, we used the model to exactly match only one data point: the trough of the Great Depression, that is, an output collapse of 30 percent, deflation of 10 percent, and a zero short-term nominal interest rate. Because we form our priors as distributions, the key economic inference of our analysis--the multipliers of tax and spending--are well-defined probability ...
Report
Fiscal multipliers and policy coordination
This paper addresses the effectiveness of fiscal policy at zero nominal interest rates. I analyze a stochastic general equilibrium model with sticky prices and rational expectations and assume that the government cannot commit to future policy. Real government spending increases demand by increasing public consumption. Deficit spending increases demand by generating inflation expectations. I derive fiscal spending multipliers that calculate how much output increases for each dollar of government spending (real or deficit). Under monetary and fiscal policy coordination, the real spending ...