IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/29226.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Stabilization with Fiscal Policy

Author

Listed:
  • Narayana R. Kocherlakota

Abstract

I reconsider the long-standing consensus view that macroeconomic stabilization should rely on monetary policy, not fiscal policy. I use an analytically tractable heterogeneous agent New Keynesian (HANK) model that is parameterized so as to admit a bubble in public debt. In this context, I show that it is possible to stabilize either inflation or output in response to aggregate shocks by varying only fiscal policy (that is, lump-sum uniform transfers). In contrast, when the public debt bubble is large, it is impossible to stabilize either inflation or output by varying only interest rates (monetary policy).

Suggested Citation

  • Narayana R. Kocherlakota, 2021. "Stabilization with Fiscal Policy," NBER Working Papers 29226, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:29226
    Note: EFG ME
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w29226.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Olivier Blanchard, 2019. "Public Debt and Low Interest Rates," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 109(4), pages 1197-1229, April.
    2. Greg Kaplan & Benjamin Moll & Giovanni L. Violante, 2018. "Monetary Policy According to HANK," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 108(3), pages 697-743, March.
    3. Sushant Acharya & Keshav Dogra, 2020. "Understanding HANK: Insights From a PRANK," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 88(3), pages 1113-1158, May.
    4. Tobias Broer & Niels-Jakob Harbo Hansen & Per Krusell & Erik Öberg, 2020. "The New Keynesian Transmission Mechanism: A Heterogeneous-Agent Perspective," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 87(1), pages 77-101.
    5. Adrien Auclert, 2019. "Monetary Policy and the Redistribution Channel," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 109(6), pages 2333-2367, June.
    6. 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.
    7. Jordi Gal?, 2014. "Monetary Policy and Rational Asset Price Bubbles," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(3), pages 721-752, March.
    8. Vladimir Asriyan & Luca Fornaro & Alberto Martin & Jaume Ventura, 2021. "Monetary Policy for a Bubbly World [Money and Capital in a Persistent Liquidity Trap]," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 88(3), pages 1418-1456.
    9. Olivier Blanchard & Jordi Galí, 2007. "Real Wage Rigidities and the New Keynesian Model," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 39(s1), pages 35-65, February.
    10. Jordi Galí, 2015. "Monetary Policy, Inflation, and the Business Cycle: An Introduction to the New Keynesian Framework and Its Applications Second edition," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 2, number 10495.
    11. N. Gregory Mankiw, 2020. "A Skeptic's Guide to Modern Monetary Theory," AEA Papers and Proceedings, American Economic Association, vol. 110, pages 141-144, May.
    12. Christian K. Wolf, 2021. "Interest Rate Cuts vs. Stimulus Payments: An Equivalence Result," NBER Working Papers 29193, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Alisdair McKay & Johannes F. Wieland, 2021. "Lumpy Durable Consumption Demand and the Limited Ammunition of Monetary Policy," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 89(6), pages 2717-2749, November.
    14. Alisdair McKay & Emi Nakamura & Jón Steinsson, 2016. "The Power of Forward Guidance Revisited," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(10), pages 3133-3158, October.
    15. Feng Dong & Jianjun Miao & Pengfei Wang, 2020. "Asset Bubbles and Monetary Policy," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 37, pages 68-98, August.
    16. Narayana R. Kocherlakota, 2023. "Public Debt Bubbles In Heterogeneous Agent Models With Tail Risk," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 64(2), pages 491-509, May.
    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. Narayana R. Kocherlakota, 2023. "Public Debt Bubbles In Heterogeneous Agent Models With Tail Risk," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 64(2), pages 491-509, May.
    2. Swapan-Kumar Pradhan & Elod Takats & Judit Temesvary, "undated". "How does fiscal policy affect the transmission of monetary policy into cross-border bank lending? Cross-country evidence," BIS Working Papers 1226, Bank for International Settlements.
    3. Sukono & Riza Andrian Ibrahim & Moch Panji Agung Saputra & Yuyun Hidayat & Hafizan Juahir & Igif Gimin Prihanto & Nurfadhlina Binti Abdul Halim, 2022. "Modeling Multiple-Event Catastrophe Bond Prices Involving the Trigger Event Correlation, Interest, and Inflation Rates," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 10(24), pages 1-18, December.

    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. Jordi Galí, 2021. "Monetary Policy and Bubbles in a New Keynesian Model with Overlapping Generations," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 13(2), pages 121-167, April.
    2. Oliver Pfäuti & Fabian Seyrich, 2022. "A Behavioral Heterogeneous Agent New Keynesian Model," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 1995, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    3. Sushant Acharya & Keshav Dogra, 2020. "Understanding HANK: Insights From a PRANK," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 88(3), pages 1113-1158, May.
    4. Sushant Acharya & Edouard Challe & Keshav Dogra, 2023. "Optimal Monetary Policy According to HANK," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 113(7), pages 1741-1782, July.
    5. Ben Moll, 2020. "The Research Agenda: Ben Moll on the Rich Interactions between Inequality and the Macroeconomy," EconomicDynamics Newsletter, Review of Economic Dynamics, vol. 21(2), November.
    6. Bayer, Christian & Born, Benjamin & Luetticke, Ralph, 2023. "The liquidity channel of fiscal policy," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 134(C), pages 86-117.
    7. Bilbiie, Florin O. & Monacelli, Tommaso & Perotti, Roberto, 2024. "Stabilization vs. Redistribution: The optimal monetary–fiscal mix," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 147(S).
    8. Bilbiie, Florin O., 2020. "The New Keynesian cross," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 90-108.
    9. Jordi Galí, 2018. "The State of New Keynesian Economics: A Partial Assessment," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 32(3), pages 87-112, Summer.
    10. Hannah Magdalena Seidl & Fabian Seyrich, 2021. "Unconventional Fiscal Policy in HANK," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 1953, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    11. Bilbiie, Florin O. & Känzig, Diego R. & Surico, Paolo, 2022. "Capital and income inequality: An aggregate-demand complementarity," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 126(C), pages 154-169.
    12. Martin B. Holm, 2023. "Monetary transmission with income risk," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 125(2), pages 441-460, April.
    13. Chipeniuk, Karsten O. & Katz, Nets Hawk & Walker, Todd B., 2022. "Households, auctioneers, and aggregation," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 141(C).
    14. Kase, Hanno & Melosi, Leonardo & Rottner, Matthias, 2024. "Estimating Nonlinear Heterogeneous Agent Models with Neural Networks," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 1499, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.
    15. Felipe Alves & Greg Kaplan & Benjamin Moll & Giovanni L. Violante, 2020. "A Further Look at the Propagation of Monetary Policy Shocks in HANK," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 52(S2), pages 521-559, December.
    16. Collard, Fabrice & Boissay, Frédéric & Galì, Jordi & Manea, Cristina, 2021. "Monetary Policy and Endogenous Financial Crises," TSE Working Papers 21-1277, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE), revised Apr 2023.
    17. Marco Bassetto & Thomas J. Sargent, 2020. "Shotgun Wedding: Fiscal and Monetary Policy," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 12(1), pages 659-690, August.
    18. Joshua K. Hausman & Paul W. Rhode & Johannes F. Wieland, 2019. "Recovery from the Great Depression: The Farm Channel in Spring 1933," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 109(2), pages 427-472, February.
    19. Nicolas Caramp & Dejanir Silva, 2023. "Fiscal Policy and the Monetary Transmission Mechanism," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 51, pages 716-746, December.
    20. Alisdair McKay & Ricardo Reis, 2021. "Optimal Automatic Stabilizers [Consumption versus Expenditure]," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 88(5), pages 2375-2406.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E58 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Central Banks and Their Policies
    • 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

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:nbr:nberwo:29226. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.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.