A Fiscal Theory of Money and Banking

Abstract

We introduce banks to the fiscal theory of price level to study the effectiveness of open market operations in correcting the distortions caused by an improper tax rate. A rise in the tax rate increases the real purchasing power of payment liquidity for short-term consumption, but reduces firms' incentive to take loans for long-term investment. An excessively low tax rate leads to an over-investment problem, which can be rectified by a combination of reverse repo operations and a positive reserve requirement. The optimal reverse repo rate is a function of the “fiscal gap”, that is, the difference between the optimal tax rate and the actual tax rate. By contrast, an excessively high tax rate leads to an under-investment problem. Open market operations are ineffective in this case as the zero lower bound of interest rates prevents the central bank from injecting additional credit to the economy.