IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/dyncon/v132y2021ics0165188921001457.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Optimal fiscal policy with low interest rates for government debt

Author

Listed:
  • Pfeiffer, Philipp
  • Roeger, Werner
  • Vogel, Lukas

Abstract

This paper analyzes optimal fiscal policy when the rate at which governments can borrow changes persistently. To analyze trade-offs, we allow for fiscal distortions and productive government spending and characterize the optimal mix between spending and revenue measures in a low rate environment. We find that low interest rates on government bonds can be welfare-enhancing if used by the government for fiscal measures that reduce the level of distortion, notably the labor tax, permanently. In the case of a general "flight-to-quality”, where households ask for a premium for holding physical (private) capital, the optimal policy is to increase the public-to-private capital ratio for as long as the shock persists. The associated financing needs should be met by a small increase in government debt and a temporary capital tax.

Suggested Citation

  • Pfeiffer, Philipp & Roeger, Werner & Vogel, Lukas, 2021. "Optimal fiscal policy with low interest rates for government debt," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 132(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:dyncon:v:132:y:2021:i:c:s0165188921001457
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jedc.2021.104210
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165188921001457
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jedc.2021.104210?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Arvind Krishnamurthy & Annette Vissing-Jorgensen, 2012. "The Aggregate Demand for Treasury Debt," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 120(2), pages 233-267.
    2. Farhi, Emmanuel & Gourinchas, Pierre-Olivier & Caballero, Ricardo, 2017. "Rents, Technical Change, and Risk Premia: Accounting for Secular Trends in Interest Rates, Returns to Capital, Earnings Yields," CEPR Discussion Papers 11833, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    3. Valerie A. Ramey, 2020. "The Macroeconomic Consequences of Infrastructure Investment," NBER Chapters, in: Economic Analysis and Infrastructure Investment, pages 219-268, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Coenen, Günter & Straub, Roland & Trabandt, Mathias, 2013. "Gauging the effects of fiscal stimulus packages in the euro area," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 37(2), pages 367-386.
    5. Olivier Blanchard, 2019. "Public Debt and Low Interest Rates," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 109(4), pages 1197-1229, April.
    6. Ricardo J. Caballero & Emmanuel Farhi & Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas, 2017. "Rents, Technical Change, and Risk Premia Accounting for Secular Trends in Interest Rates, Returns on Capital, Earning Yields, and Factor Shares," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 107(5), pages 614-620, May.
    7. Lukasz Rachel & Thomas D. Smith, 2017. "Are Low Real Interest Rates Here to Stay?," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 13(3), pages 1-42, September.
    8. Barry Eichengreen & Asmaa El-Ganainy & Rui Esteves & Kris James Mitchener, 2019. "Public Debt Through the Ages," NBER Working Papers 25494, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Lars Ljungqvist & Thomas J. Sargent, 2004. "Recursive Macroeconomic Theory, 2nd Edition," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 2, volume 1, number 026212274x, December.
    10. Lawrence H. Summers, 2018. "Secular Stagnation and Macroeconomic Policy," IMF Economic Review, Palgrave Macmillan;International Monetary Fund, vol. 66(2), pages 226-250, June.
    11. Lukasz Rachel & Thomas Smith, 2015. "Secular Drivers of the Global Real Interest Rate," Discussion Papers 1605, Centre for Macroeconomics (CFM).
    12. Judd, Kenneth L., 1985. "Redistributive taxation in a simple perfect foresight model," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(1), pages 59-83, October.
    13. Simon Gilchrist & Benoit Mojon, 2018. "Credit Risk in the Euro Area," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 128(608), pages 118-158, February.
    14. Simon Gilchrist & Benoit Mojon, 2018. "Credit Risk in the Euro Area," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 128(608), pages 118-158, February.
    15. Lucas, Robert Jr. & Stokey, Nancy L., 1983. "Optimal fiscal and monetary policy in an economy without capital," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 12(1), pages 55-93.
    16. Olivier J. Blanchard & Lawrence H. Summers, 2017. "Rethinking Stabilization Policy: Evolution or Revolution?," NBER Working Papers 24179, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Gunter Coenen & Roland Straub & Mathias Trabandt, 2012. "Fiscal Policy and the Great Recession in the Euro Area," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(3), pages 71-76, May.
    18. Leeper, Eric M. & Walker, Todd B. & Yang, Shu-Chun S., 2010. "Government investment and fiscal stimulus," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 57(8), pages 1000-1012, November.
    19. Lukasz Rachel & Lawrence H. Summers, 2019. "On Secular Stagnation in the Industrialized World," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 50(1 (Spring), pages 1-76.
    20. Olivier J Blanchard, 2019. "Public Debt: Fiscal and Welfare Costs in a Time of Low Interest Rates," Policy Briefs PB19-2, Peterson Institute for International Economics.
    21. Baxter, Marianne & King, Robert G, 1993. "Fiscal Policy in General Equilibrium," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(3), pages 315-334, June.
    22. Eric Meyermans & Alexander Leodolter & Leonor Pires & Savina Princen & Aleksander Rutkowski, 2020. "Shifting taxes away from labour to strengthen growth in the euro area," Quarterly Report on the Euro Area (QREA), Directorate General Economic and Financial Affairs (DG ECFIN), European Commission, vol. 19(1), pages 9-25, June.
    23. Clemens Fuest & Daniel Gros, 2019. "Government debt in times of low interest rates: the case of Europe," EconPol Policy Brief 16, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich.
    24. Ricardo J. Caballero & Emmanuel Farhi & Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas, 2017. "The Safe Assets Shortage Conundrum," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 31(3), pages 29-46, Summer.
    25. repec:ecb:ecbwps:20111429 is not listed on IDEAS
    26. Chamley, Christophe, 1986. "Optimal Taxation of Capital Income in General Equilibrium with Infinite Lives," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 54(3), pages 607-622, May.
    27. Ludwig Straub & Iván Werning, 2020. "Positive Long-Run Capital Taxation: Chamley-Judd Revisited," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 110(1), pages 86-119, January.
    28. Pedro R.D. Bom & Jenny E. Ligthart, 2014. "What Have We Learned From Three Decades Of Research On The Productivity Of Public Capital?," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(5), pages 889-916, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Philipp Pfeiffer & Janos Varga & Jan in 't Veld, 2021. "Quantifying Spillovers of Next Generation EU Investment," European Economy - Discussion Papers 144, Directorate General Economic and Financial Affairs (DG ECFIN), European Commission.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Marco Bassetto & Wei Cui, 2024. "A Ramsey Theory of Financial Distortions," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 132(8), pages 2612-2654.
    2. Marx, Magali & Mojon, Benoît & Velde, François R., 2021. "Why have interest rates fallen far below the return on capital?," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 124(S), pages 57-76.
    3. Feld, Lars P. & Schmidt, Christoph M. & Schnabel, Isabel & Truger, Achim & Wieland, Volker, 2019. "Den Strukturwandel meistern. Jahresgutachten 2019/20 [Dealing with Structural Change. Annual Report 2019/20]," Annual Economic Reports / Jahresgutachten, German Council of Economic Experts / Sachverständigenrat zur Begutachtung der gesamtwirtschaftlichen Entwicklung, volume 127, number 201920, September.
    4. Malley, James & Philippopoulos, Apostolis, 2023. "The macroeconomic effects of funding U.S. infrastructure," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 152(C).
    5. Aguiar, Mark & Amador, Manuel, 2016. "Fiscal policy in debt constrained economies," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 161(C), pages 37-75.
    6. Valerie A. Ramey, 2020. "The Macroeconomic Consequences of Infrastructure Investment," NBER Chapters, in: Economic Analysis and Infrastructure Investment, pages 219-268, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Orhan Erem Atesagaoglu & Hakki Yazici, 2021. "Optimal Taxation of Capital in the Presence of Declining Labor Share," CESifo Working Paper Series 9101, CESifo.
    8. Bonam, Dennis & Ciccarelli, Matteo & Gomes, Sandra & Aldama, Pierre & Bańkowski, Krzysztof & Buss, Ginters & da Costa, José Cardoso & Christoffel, Kai & Elfsbacka Schmöller, Michaela & Jacquinot, Pasc, 2024. "Challenges for monetary and fiscal policy interactions in the post-pandemic era," Occasional Paper Series 337, European Central Bank.
    9. Max Franks & David Klenert & Anselm Schultes & Kai Lessmann & Ottmar Edenhofer, 2018. "Is capital back? The role of land ownership and savings behavior," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 25(5), pages 1252-1276, October.
    10. Orhan Erem Atesagaoglu & Hakki Yazici, 2021. "Optimal Taxation of Capital in the Presence of Declining Labor Share," Bristol Economics Discussion Papers 21/739, School of Economics, University of Bristol, UK.
    11. Aursland, Thor Andreas & Frankovic, Ivan & Kanik, Birol & Saxegaard, Magnus, 2020. "State-dependent fiscal multipliers in NORA - A DSGE model for fiscal policy analysis in Norway," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 93(C), pages 321-353.
    12. Piero Gottardi & Atsushi Kajii & Tomoyuki Nakajima, 2015. "Optimal Taxation and Debt with Uninsurable Risks to Human Capital Accumulation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(11), pages 3443-3470, November.
    13. Hafedh Bouakez & Michel Guillard & Jordan Roulleau-Pasdeloup, 2017. "Public Investment, Time to Build, and the Zero Lower Bound," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 23, pages 60-79, January.
    14. Del Negro, Marco & Giannone, Domenico & Giannoni, Marc P. & Tambalotti, Andrea, 2019. "Global trends in interest rates," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 248-262.
    15. Gross, Till & Klein, Paul & Makris, Miltiadis, 2020. "Residence- and source-based capital taxation in open economies with infinitely-lived consumers," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 127(C).
    16. Mario Alloza & Danilo Leiva-León & Alberto Urtasun, 2022. "The response of private investment to an increase in public investment," Economic Bulletin, Banco de España, issue 2/2022.
    17. Koskela Erkki & Thadden Leopold von, 2008. "Optimal Factor Taxation under Wage Bargaining: A Dynamic Perspective," German Economic Review, De Gruyter, vol. 9(2), pages 135-159, May.
    18. Brendon, Charles & Ellison, Martin, 2018. "Time-consistently undominated policies," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 87176, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    19. Marrero, Gustavo A. & Novales, Alfonso, 2005. "Growth and welfare: Distorting versus non-distorting taxes," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 27(3), pages 403-433, September.
    20. Brand, Claus & Goy, Gavin W & Lemke, Wolfgang, 2020. "Natural rate chimera and bond pricing reality," VfS Annual Conference 2020 (Virtual Conference): Gender Economics 224546, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Optimal fiscal policy; Distortionary taxes; Government investment; Interest rate; Safe rate; Risky rate; Secular stagnation;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E62 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Fiscal Policy; Modern Monetary Theory
    • H3 - Public Economics - - Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic Agents
    • H4 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods
    • H6 - Public Economics - - National Budget, Deficit, and Debt

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:dyncon:v:132:y:2021:i:c:s0165188921001457. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jedc .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.