Accounting Regimes and Fiscal Rules

Fiscal Foundations of Monetary Regimes

Fiscal considerations and commitment drive the choice of monetary policy regime, especially for developing countries. I survey the fiscal foundations of price determination, and study the maximize-inflation-tax, interest rate rule, peg and currency board, and dollarization regime. Since nominal debt acts like equity for the government, the dollarization question is like the question whether a f...

Fiscal Rules and Fiscal Performance in the EU and Japan

Fiscal rules specify quantitative targets for key budgetary aggregates. In this paper, we review the experience with such rules in Japan and in the EU. Comparing the performance of fiscal policy in the 1980s and 1990s until 2003, we find that the fiscal rule of the 1980s exerted some but not much disciplinary influence on Japanese fiscal policy. The fiscal rule of the Maastricht Treaty had a si...

Optimal Inflation Targeting Under Alternative Fiscal Regimes

Flexible inflation targeting has been advocated as a practical approach to the implementation of an optimal state-contingent monetary policy, but theoretical expositions reaching this conclusion have typically abstracted from the fiscal consequences of monetary policy. Here we extend the standard theory by considering the character of optimal monetary policy under a variety of assumptions about...

Implementation Rules for Fiscal Decentralization

Simple, Implementable Fiscal Policy Rules

This paper analyzes the scope for systematic rules-based fiscal activism in open economies. Relative to a balanced budget rule, automatic stabilizers significantly improve welfare. But they minimize fiscal instrument volatility rather than business cycle volatility. A more aggressively countercyclical tax revenue gap rule increases welfare gains by around 50 percent, with only modest increases ...