IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eej/eeconj/v13y1987i2p123-136.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Neutrality of Optimal Government Financial Policy: Supplying the Intergenerational Free Lunch

Author

Listed:
  • Dean D. Croushore

Abstract

This paper demonstrates the usefulness and simplicity of the overlapping-generations model for analyzing certain types of macroeconomic problems. An overlapping-generations model is used to clarify and interpret some existing neutrality theorems concerning government debt and monetization. The results demonstrate the stringency of the conditions needed for neutrality, suggesting that money and government debt are very unlikely to be neutral.

Suggested Citation

  • Dean D. Croushore, 1987. "The Neutrality of Optimal Government Financial Policy: Supplying the Intergenerational Free Lunch," Eastern Economic Journal, Eastern Economic Association, vol. 13(2), pages 123-136, Apr-Jun.
    • Handle: RePEc:eej:eeconj:v:13:y:1987:i:2:p:123-136
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://web.holycross.edu/RePEc/eej/Archive/Volume13/V13N2P123_136.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Barro, Robert J, 1974. "Are Government Bonds Net Wealth?," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 82(6), pages 1095-1117, Nov.-Dec..
    2. Burbidge, John B, 1983. "Government Debt in an Overlapping-Generations Model with Bequests and Gifts," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 73(1), pages 222-227, March.
    3. Paul A. Samuelson, 1958. "An Exact Consumption-Loan Model of Interest with or without the Social Contrivance of Money," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 66(6), pages 467-467.
    4. Thomas J. Sargent & Neil Wallace, 1984. "Some Unpleasant Monetarist Arithmetic," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Brian Griffiths & Geoffrey E. Wood (ed.), Monetarism in the United Kingdom, pages 15-41, Palgrave Macmillan.
    5. Freeman, Scott, 1985. "Transactions Costs and the Optimal Quantity of Money," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 93(1), pages 146-157, February.
    6. Wallace, Neil, 1981. "A Modigliani-Miller Theorem for Open-Market Operations," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 71(3), pages 267-274, June.
    7. Jovanovic, Boyan, 1982. "Inflation and Welfare in the Steady State," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 90(3), pages 561-577, June.
    8. Bierwag, G O & Grove, M A & Khang, Chulsoon, 1969. "National Debt in a Neoclassical Growth Model: Comment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 59(1), pages 205-210, March.
    9. Rotemberg, Julio J, 1984. "A Monetary Equilibrium Model with Transactions Costs," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 92(1), pages 40-58, February.
    10. Drazen, Allan, 1978. "Government Debt, Human Capital, and Bequests in a Life-Cycle Model," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 86(3), pages 505-516, June.
    11. Webb, David C, 1981. "The Net Wealth Effect of Government Bonds When Credit Markets are Imperfect," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 91(362), pages 405-414, June.
    12. Helpman, Elhanan & Sadka, Efraim, 1979. "Optimal Financing of the Government's Budget: Taxes, Bonds, or Money?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 69(1), pages 152-160, March.
    13. Bryant, John & Wallace, Neil, 1979. "The Inefficiency of Interest-bearing National Debt," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 87(2), pages 365-381, April.
    14. McCallum, Bennett T., 1983. "The role of overlapping-generations models in monetary economics," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 18(1), pages 9-44, January.
    15. Grossman, Sanford & Weiss, Laurence, 1983. "A Transactions-Based Model of the Monetary Transmission Mechanism," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 73(5), pages 871-880, December.
    16. David Cass & Menahem E. Yaari, 1966. "A Re-examination of the Pure Consumption Loans Model," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 74(4), pages 353-353.
    17. Feldstein, Martin S, 1976. "Perceived Wealth in Bonds and Social Security: A Comment," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 84(2), pages 331-336, April.
    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. Fred Wallace, 1989. "The Neutrality of Optimal Government Financial Policy: Supplying the Intergenerational Free Lunch: A Comment," Eastern Economic Journal, Eastern Economic Association, vol. 15(2), pages 147-150, Apr-Jun.
    2. Dean D. Croushore, 1989. "What Neutrality Means in Macroeconomics: Reply," Eastern Economic Journal, Eastern Economic Association, vol. 15(2), pages 150-152, Apr-Jun.

    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. McCallum, Bennett T., 1983. "The role of overlapping-generations models in monetary economics," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 18(1), pages 9-44, January.
    2. Li, Jenny X., 1998. "Numerical analysis of a nonlinear operator equation arising from a monetary model," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 22(8-9), pages 1335-1351, August.
    3. Schoonbroodt, Alice & Tertilt, Michèle, 2014. "Property rights and efficiency in OLG models with endogenous fertility," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 150(C), pages 551-582.
    4. Sargent, Thomas J, 1982. "Beyond Demand and Supply Curves in Macroeconomics," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 72(2), pages 382-389, May.
    5. Alice Schoonbroodt, 2010. "Who Owns Children and Does It Matter?," Working Papers id:2360, eSocialSciences.
    6. Homburg, Stefan, 2017. "A Study in Monetary Macroeconomics," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198807537.
    7. Sterk, Vincent & Tenreyro, Silvana, 2018. "The transmission of monetary policy through redistributions and durable purchases," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 99(C), pages 124-137.
    8. Etro, Federico, 2017. "Research in economics and macroeconomics," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(3), pages 373-383.
    9. Herschel I. Grossman, 1981. "Familial Love and Intertemporal Optimality," NBER Working Papers 0695, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. B. Douglas Bernheim, 1987. "Ricardian Equivalence: An Evaluation of Theory and Evidence," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 1987, Volume 2, pages 263-316, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Bona, Jerry L. & Li, Jenny X., 2001. "Stabilizing Monetary-Injection Policies," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 98(1), pages 127-157, May.
    12. Willem H. Buiter, 1982. "The Proper Measurement of Government Budget Deficits: Comprehensive Wealth Accounting or Permanent Income Accounting for the Public Sector," NBER Working Papers 1013, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Geoffrey M. B. Tootell, 1992. "Back to the future: monetary policy and the twin deficits," Working Papers 92-1, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
    14. Brunnermeier, Markus K. & Niepelt, Dirk, 2019. "On the equivalence of private and public money," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 27-41.
    15. Elmendorf, Douglas W. & Gregory Mankiw, N., 1999. "Government debt," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & M. Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 25, pages 1615-1669, Elsevier.
    16. Fernando Alvarez & Andrew Atkeson & Patrick J. Kehoe, 2002. "Money, Interest Rates, and Exchange Rates with Endogenously Segmented Markets," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 110(1), pages 73-112, February.
    17. Florin Bilbiie & Xavier Ragot, 2021. "Optimal Monetary Policy and Liquidity with Heterogeneous Households," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 41, pages 71-95, July.
    18. Abel, Andrew B & Warshawsky, Mark, 1988. "Specification of the Joy of Giving: Insights from Altruism," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 70(1), pages 145-149, February.
    19. James M. Poterba & Julio J. Rotemberg, 1986. "Money in the Utility Function: An Empirical Implementation," NBER Working Papers 1796, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    20. Enders, Zeno, 2010. "Heterogeneous consumers, segmented asset markets, and the effects of monetary policy," Bonn Econ Discussion Papers 08/2010, University of Bonn, Bonn Graduate School of Economics (BGSE).

    More about this item

    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:eej:eeconj:v:13:y:1987:i:2:p:123-136. 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: Victor Matheson, College of the Holy Cross (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/eeaa1ea.html .

    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.