Optimal Fiscal Rule Research Articles

Searching for optimal fiscal rules: the case of Israel

Searching for optimal fiscal rules: the case of Israel

Sovereign bail‐outs and fiscal rules in a banking union*

AbstractIn this paper, we study optimal fiscal rules in a two‐country economy in which cross‐country linkages between sovereign debts and banking sectors motivate bail‐outs among countries. The first‐best sovereign borrowing, which is contingent on the output gap between the countries, cannot be achieved in the presence of asymmetric information on a country's potential output. Because bail‐out induces overborrowing, fiscal rules can be implemented to prevent the ensuing inefficiency. A mechanism can be designed to induce a country with low potential output (i.e., a small negative output gap) to run an optimal budget deficit upon receiving a transfer (ex post) from the other country. We characterize conditions under which this fiscal mechanism Pareto dominates a “cyclically adjusted” fiscal rule imposing a unique ceiling on a country's borrowing, independently of its potential output. We apply our setting to a discussion of the implications for fiscal rules within the European Monetary Union.

Fiscal Rules as Bargaining Chips

Abstract Most fiscal rules can be overridden by consensus. We show that this does not make them ineffectual. Since fiscal rules determine the outside option in case of disagreement, the opposition uses them as “bargaining chips” to obtain spending concessions. We show that under some conditions this political bargain mitigates the debt-accumulation problem. We analyse various rules and find that when political polarization is high, harsh fiscal rules (e.g. government shutdown) maximize the opposition’s bargaining power and lead to lower debt accumulation. When polarization is low, less strict fiscal limits (e.g. balanced-budget rule) are preferable. Moreover, we find that the optimal fiscal rules could arise in equilibrium by negotiation. Finally, by insuring against power fluctuations, negotiable rules yield higher welfare than hard ones.

New Evidence on Debt as an Obstacle for US Economic Growth

The US government debt is now in uncharted waters. From the founding of the nation until 1968, government debt moved up and down without a trend, but over the past 50 years, debt relative to the size of the economy has increased continuously. The United States does not appear to have a coherent debt policy. It is not Greece, and there is no evidence of a likely default on US government bonds in the near future. However, there is evidence that Americans have already borne the costs of high debt levels, and without a reform of policy these costs will continue in the future. Using a new econometric technique for threshold autoregression and a debt measure that includes private debt as well as public debt, we estimate that in the period 1995 to 2014, US economic growth was more than 1 percentage point lower than it would have been at a debt level below the threshold. Other Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries also had lower growth rates as a result of high debt levels. Many countries have recently adopted some form of fiscal rule, including balanced budgets, intended to limit debt and raise growth rates. Fiscal rules involve a tradeoff between limiting debt and preserving flexibility to respond to economic shocks. In this paper we discuss problems related to designing optimal fiscal rules.

Optimal Fiscal Rules

This paper studies the welfare effect of restrictions imposed on government debt and deficit. The analysis is conducted in a sovereign default framework with endogenous default decisions. In addition to the conventional exponential discounting preferences the paper also studies a specification, in which agents have self-control problems. The results show that debt ceilings increase welfare for both types of preferences, while deficit restrictions have negative effect for exponential discounting model and positive effect for the model with time-inconsistent preferences.

Fiscal Rules and the Sovereign Default Premium

This paper finds optimal fiscal rule parameter values and measures the effects of imposing fiscal rules using a default model calibrated to an economy that in the absence of a fiscal rule pays a significant sovereign default premium. The paper also studies the case in which the government conducts a voluntary debt restructuring to capture the capital gains from the increase in its debt market value implied by a rule announcement. In addition, the paper shows how debt ceilings may reduce the procyclicality of fiscal policy and thus consumption volatility.

The optimal fiscal rule in the context of accession to the Eurozone

The aim of the paper is to compare the macroeconomic effects of fiscal rules that can be applied in the context of the future full participation of Poland in the Economic and Monetary Union. The results of our analyses show that we observe the smallest changes in the structural balance when fiscal policy is aimed at both GDP stabilisation and business cycles synchronisation. Unfortunately, when we analyse the characteristics of the fiscal rule we discover that the possibility of effective practical application of such a rule is very limited. The reason for this may be the lack of transparency and delays we face in publishing macroeconomic data, which is indispensable for fiscal rule application.

Fiscal Rules and Discretion under Persistent Shocks

This paper studies the optimal level of discretion in policymaking. We consider a fiscal policy model where the government has time-inconsistent preferences with a present-bias towards public spending. The government chooses a fiscal rule to trade off its desire to commit to not overspend against its desire to have flexibility to react to privately observed shocks to the value of spending. We analyze the optimal fiscal rule when the shocks are persistent. Unlike under i.i.d. shocks, we show that the ex-ante optimal rule is not sequentially optimal, as it provides dynamic incentives. The ex-ante optimal rule exhibits history dependence, with high shocks leading to an erosion of future fiscal discipline compared to low shocks, which lead to the reinstatement of discipline. The implied policy distortions oscillate over time given a sequence of high shocks, and can force the government to accumulate maximal debt and become immiserated in the long run.

Which is the optimal fiscal rule in a monetary union? Targeting the structural, the global budgetary deficit, or the public debt?

AbstractThe aim of our paper is to contribute to the debate on optimal fiscal rules in a monetary union: in terms of global budgetary deficit, of structural budgetary deficit, or of public debt. Indeed, these rules seem to be mixed in the framework of the European Economic and Monetary Union, with the new Fiscal Compact. With the help of a simple macroeconomic model, we show that a goal in terms of public debt is the most appropriate in order to decrease the indebtedness levels, but that it could increase the recessionary risks for the most indebted European countries. Goals in terms of global budgetary deficit or public debt are the most appropriate to limit the budgetary activism and to stabilize fiscal variables in case of demand or supply shocks. However, a goal in terms of structural budgetary deficit is the most appropriate in order to stabilize economic activity levels in case of asymmetric demand or supply shocks.

Optimal Design of New Generation Fiscal Rules: Coping with the Business Cycle and Discretionary Tax Reductions

While business cycles are crucial for determining the dynamics of government budget deficits, it is rare to find an analysis of optimal fiscal rules that are designed to cope with the asymmetric behavior of fiscal variables during the cycle. In this paper I characterize the dynamics of budget deficits along the cycle: i) in recessions marginal propensity to spend is higher than the coefficient of marginal tax revenues, causing an increase of the deficit over GDP; ii) in expansions tax revenues soar allowing for a deficit reduction; however, marginal spending is still high and consequently a full cycle implies an increase in the deficit. Then, I present a model in which fiscal rules are designed to cope with a political bias that is based on two components: the cyclical bias and discretionary tax reductions. According to my analysis, the new generation fiscal rules should be based on a combination of expenditure and revenue rules, which are newer than budget deficit rules and are becoming widespread. According to my empirically calibrated simulation, this combination of rules succeeds on avoiding the political bias and is more cycle-friendly than a budget deficit rule.

Optimal choice of fiscal policy instruments in a stochastic IS–LM model

This article derives optimal fiscal rules within a stochastic model of Keynesian type in the context of Poole (1970). By using optimal control theory and applying the Hamilton–Jacobi–Bellman equation, we extend the original Poole results concerning the output stabilization properties of monetary policy to the case of fiscal policy. In particular, we look for the optimal setting of government expenditure and lump-sum taxation in the case that the fiscal authority wishes to keep the product close to a reference value and that the economy is assumed to be affected by stochastic disturbances of real and/or monetary type. According to our findings an expenditure rule is preferable to a taxation rule when the two instruments are independent. The introduction of a fiscal budget rule can make taxation preferable under a certain model parametrization.

Fiscal Rules and Discretion Under Persistent Shocks

This paper studies the optimal level of discretion in policymaking. We consider a fiscal policy model where the government has time-inconsistent preferences with a present bias toward public spending. The government chooses a fiscal rule to trade off its desire to commit to not overspend against its desire to have flexibility to react to privately observed shocks to the value of spending. We analyze the optimal fiscal rule when the shocks are persistent. Unlike under independent and identically distributed shocks, we show that the ex ante optimal rule is not sequentially optimal, as it provides dynamic incentives. The ex ante optimal rule exhibits history dependence, with high shocks leading to an erosion of future fiscal discipline compared to low shocks, which lead to the reinstatement of discipline. The implied policy distortions oscillate over time given a sequence of high shocks, and can force the government to accumulate maximal debt and become immiserated in the long run.

Fiscal Policy Coordination in Monetary Unions

The paper studies the design of optimal fiscal rules for members of a monetary union when there are privately observed shocks to countries’ social cost of domestic taxation. First, I show that optimal fiscal rules prescribe policy coordination in the sense of domestic taxation efforts that are positively correlated across member countries. In particular, coordination achieves higher ex-ante joint welfare than any fixed upper bound on domestic deficits. Second, I show that a history of asymmetric domestic taxation efforts leads to tighter policy coordination in the sense of an emergence of retaliatory fiscal policies. As a result, past disagreement leads to an increase in expected domestic deficits across the monetary union.

Fiscal Rules and the Sovereign Default Premium

This paper finds optimal fiscal rule parameter values and measures the effects of imposing fiscal rules using a default model calibrated to an economy that in the absence of a fiscal rule pays a significant sovereign default premium. The paper also studies the case in which the government conducts a voluntary debt restructuring to capture the capital gains from the increase in its debt market value implied by a rule announcement. In addition, the paper shows how debt ceilings may reduce the procyclicality of fiscal policy and thus consumption volatility.

RULES VERSUS DISCRETION IN FISCAL POLICY*

This paper applies the Kydland–Prescott framework of dynamic inconsistency to fiscal policy by considering the trade‐off between output and debt stabilization. In a static framework, commitment to debt stabilization is superior to discretion only when the public debt–GDP ratio is high. Discretion, though, is always inferior to an optimal fiscal rule, which however entails a positive predetermined debt growth. As usual, the introduction of uncertainty determines an additional advantage for discretion. Finally, if dynamic considerations are introduced, the optimal fiscal rule is characterized by positive debt growth in the short run and debt stabilization in the long run.

On the International Dimension of Fiscal Policy

This paper analyzes the international dimension of fiscal policy in a small open economy framework. We consider the case in which the government finances its spending by levying distortionary taxes and issuing state‐contingent debt. While in a closed economy taxes are essentially invariant, in an open economy taxes can be as volatile as output. This is because the presence of a terms of trade externality introduces efficient fluctuations in the consumption–leisure wedge driven by movements in the real exchange rate. As a result, the optimal fiscal rule suggests that taxes should be varied to replicate these fluctuations.

Optimal Stabilization Policy in a Model of Elasticity Dynamics

This paper considers the role of optimal fiscal policy in the context of a macrodynamic model of the open economy. The dynamics of the model are governed by the transition of aggregate demand elasticities from their short-run values to long-run values. If there are no instrument costs attributed to government expenditure, then optimal fiscal policy can achieve perfect stabilization of price and exchange rate levels. With instrument costs however, this is no longer possible and the optimal fiscal rule is of the linear feedback variety. This paper investigates the properties of this rule.