Macroeconomic Policy Games

RePEc Short ID: pbo319
ORCID iD: 0000-0002-4400-3719

Bodenstein, Martin; Guerrieri, Luca; LaBriola, Joe

Working Paper

Macroeconomic Policy Games

Abstract: Strategic interactions between policymakers arise whenever each policymaker has distinct objectives. Deviating from full cooperation can result in large welfare losses. To facilitate the study of strategic interactions, we develop a toolbox that characterizes the welfare-maximizing cooperative Ramsey policies under full commitment and open-loop Nash games. Two examples for the use of our toolbox offer some novel results. The first example revisits the case of monetary policy coordination in a two-country model to confirm that our approach replicates well-known results in the literature and extends these results by highlighting their sensitivity to the choice of policy instrument. For the second example, a central bank and a macroprudential regulator are assigned distinct objectives in a model with financial frictions. Lack of coordination leads to large welfare losses even if technology shocks are the only source of fluctuations.

Keywords: Optimal policy; strategic interaction; welfare analysis; monetary policy cooperation; macroprudential regulations;

JEL Classification: E44; E61; F42;