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Monetary financing does not produce miraculous fiscal multipliers

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  • Christiaan van der Kwaak

    (University of Groningen)

Abstract

High levels of government debt raise the question to what extent the private sector will be willing to absorb the additional government debt that would finance future fiscal stimuli. One alternative is to money-finance such stimuli by letting the central bank buy the additional bonds and permanently retain these on its balance sheet. In this paper, I investigate the effectiveness of such money-financed fiscal stimuli when the central bank pays interest on reserves, and focus on the case where reserves and bonds are not perfect substitutes. I show for several New Keynesian models that money-financed fiscal stimuli have zero macroeconomic impact with respect to debt-financed stimuli, despite reducing funding costs for the consolidated government. Finally, I investigate the quantitative impact of money-financed fiscal stimuli for an extension where this 'irrelevance result' is broken, and find that the impact is substantially smaller than in the literature.

Suggested Citation

  • Christiaan van der Kwaak, 2024. "Monetary financing does not produce miraculous fiscal multipliers," Discussion Papers 2417, Centre for Macroeconomics (CFM).
    • Handle: RePEc:cfm:wpaper:2417
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Monetary Policy; Fiscal Policy; Monetary-Fiscal Interactions; Monetary financing;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E32 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Business Fluctuations; Cycles
    • E52 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Monetary Policy
    • E62 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Fiscal Policy; Modern Monetary Theory
    • E63 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Comparative or Joint Analysis of Fiscal and Monetary Policy; Stabilization; Treasury Policy

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