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Working Paper
Optimal Taxation with Endogenous Default under Incomplete Markets
Pouzo, Demian; Presno, Ignacio (2020-08-20)
How are the optimal tax and debt policies affected if the government has the option to default on its debt? We address this question from a normative perspective in an economy with noncontingent government debt, domestic default and labor taxes. On one hand, default prevents the government from incurring future tax distortions that would come along with the service of the debt. On the other hand, default risk gives rise to endogenous credit limits that hinder the government's ability to smooth taxes. We characterize the fiscal policy and show how the option to default alters the near-unit ...
International Finance Discussion Papers , Paper 1297

Working Paper
Fiscal Dominance
Martin, Fernando M. (2020-10-29)
Who prevails when fiscal and monetary authorities disagree about the value of public expenditure and how much to discount the future? When the fiscal authority sets debt as its main policy instrument it achieves fiscal dominance, rendering the preferences of the central bank, and thus its independence, irrelevant. When the central bank sets the nominal interest rate it renders fiscal impatience (its debt bias) irrelevant, but still faces its expenditure bias. I find that the expenditure bias is about an order of magnitude more severe than the debt bias and has a major impact on welfare ...
Working Papers , Paper 2020-040

Journal Article
COVID-19: Fiscal Implications and Financial Stability in Developing Countries
Grittayaphong, Praew; Restrepo-Echavarria, Paulina (2023-07-14)
The COVID-19 pandemic has been unlike any other crisis that we have experienced in that it hit all economies in the world at the same time, compromising the risk-sharing ability of nations. At the onset of the pandemic, the World Bank (WB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) jointly pledged 1.16 trillion U.S. dollars to help emerging economies deal with COVID-19. Would this amount have been enough to preserve financial stability in a worst case scenario, and what were the fiscal implications of the pandemic? In this article we aim to answer these questions by documenting the size of the ...
Review , Volume 105 , Issue 3 , Pages 137-149

Discussion Paper
The Rapidly Changing Nature of Japan’s Public Debt
Wheeler, Harry; Klitgaard, Thomas (2016-06-22)
Japan’s general government debt-to-GDP ratio is the highest of advanced economies, due in part to increased spending on social services for an aging population and a level of nominal GDP that has not increased for two decades. The interest rate payments from taxpayers on this debt are moderated by income earned on government assets and by low interest rates. One might think that the Bank of Japan’s purchases of government bonds would further ease the burden on taxpayers, with interest payments to the Bank of Japan on its bond holdings rebated back to the government. Merging the balance ...
Liberty Street Economics , Paper 20160622

Working Paper
How to Starve the Beast: Fiscal Policy Rules
Martin, Fernando M. (2021-04-05)
Countries have widely imposed fiscal rules designed to constrain government spending and ensure fiscal responsibility. This paper studies the effectiveness and welfare implications of revenue, deficit and debt rules when governments are discretionary and profligate. The optimal prescription is a revenue ceiling coupled with a balance budget requirement. For the U.S., the optimal revenue ceiling is about 15% of output, 3 percentage points below the postwar average. Most of the benefits can still be reaped with a milder constraint or escape clauses during adverse times. Imposing a single fiscal ...
Working Papers , Paper 2019-026

Working Paper
Who is Afraid of Eurobonds?
Bianchi, Francesco; Melosi, Leonardo; Rogantini Picco, Anna (2022-10-03)
The growing asymmetry in the size of fiscal imbalances poses a serious challenge to the macroeconomic stability of the Euro Area (EA). We show that following a contractionary shock, the current monetary and fiscal framework weakens economic growth even in low-debt countries because of the zero lower bound (ZLB) constraint. At the same time, the current framework also exposes the EA to the risk of fiscal stagflation if one country were to refuse to implement the necessary fiscal consolidations. We study a new framework that allows EA policymakers to separate the need for short-run ...
Working Paper Series , Paper WP 2022-43

Working Paper
The Value of Constraints on Discretionary Government Policy
Martin, Fernando M. (2016-02-27)
This paper investigates how institutional constraints discipline the behavior of discretionary governments subject to an expenditure bias. The focus is on constraints implemented in actual economies: monetary policy targets, limits on the deficit and debt ceilings. For a variety of aggregate shocks considered, the best policy is to impose a minimum primary surplus of about half a percent of output. Most welfare gains from constraining government behavior during normal times, which to a large extent is sufficient to discipline policy in adverse times. Monetary policy targets are not generally ...
Working Papers , Paper 2016-19

Working Paper
A Tax Plan for Endogenous Innovation
Croce, Mariano; Raymond, Stephen; Schmid, Lukas; Karantounias, Anastasios G. (2017-11-01)
In times when elevated government debt raises concerns about dimmer global growth prospects, we ask: How can the government provide incentives for innovation in a fiscally sustainable way? We address this question by examining the Ramsey problem of finding optimal tax and subsidy schemes in a model in which growth is endogenously sustained by risky innovation. We characterize the shadow value of growth and entry in the innovation sector. We find that a profit tax is required to replicate the first-best in order to balance the externalities associated with innovative activity. At the ...
FRB Atlanta Working Paper , Paper 2017-13

Journal Article
Fiscal Dominance and the Return of Zero-Interest Bank Reserve Requirements
Calomiris, Charles W. (2023-10-02)
As a matter of arithmetic, the trends of US government debt and deficits will eventually result in an outrageously high government debt-to-GDP ratio. But when exactly will the United States hit the constraint of infeasibility and how exactly will policy adjust to it? This article considers fiscal dominance, which is the possibility that accumulating government debt and deficits can produce increases in inflation that "dominate" central bank intentions to keep inflation low. Is it a serious possibility for the United States in the near future? And how might various policies change (especially ...
Review , Volume 105 , Issue 4 , Pages 223-233

What’s behind Japan’s High Government Debt?
Chien, YiLi; Stewart, Ashley (2025-04-01)
With a rapidly aging population and economic growth near zero, Japan has faced a persistent fiscal challenge: a large social security deficit.
On the Economy

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