This paper revisits the traditional hierarchy of macroeconomic stabilization tools outside of the zero lower bound. In the benchmark New-Keynesian model monetary policy is always preferred to fiscal policy because fiscal policy has relative costs without delivering any relative benefits. I explore the robustness of this standard “monetary supremacy” result in three steps. First, motivated by em...

The primary objective of Eurosystem monetary policy is to maintain price stability, de…ned as an annual increase in the HICP below two percent. 1 Because of the lags in the e¤ects of monetary-policy actions on aggregate demand and in ‡ation, monetary-policy actions cannot a¤ect current in ‡ation and output, nor in ‡ation or output in the near future. A rough benchmark is that monetary policy a¤...

In May 2000, the Treasurer/Minister of Finance invited me to review the operation of monetary policy in New Zealand and provided me with the Terms of Reference. In undertaking the review, I have read the wide range of submissions provided to me and have met with a number of submitters and other interested parties. I visited New Zealand for two weeks in November 2000 in order to observe the oper...

FREQUENTLY CITED THEORETICAL framework for the conduct of monetary policy consists of a policy instrument, an intermediate policy target and a long-run policy objective. The policy instrument is a lever which the central bank can manipulate to achieve its intermediate target. Possible choices for the policy instrument include the quantity of bank reserves, the monetary base (hank reserves plus ...

A central issue of monetary policy analysis is the specification of monetary policy shocks. In a structural vector autoregressive setting there has been some controversy about which restrictions to use for identifying the shocks because standard theories do not provide enough information to fully identify monetary policy shocks. In fact, to compare different theories it would even be desirable ...

New monetary literatures widely concentrates on the importance of institutional arrangements in the effectiveness of monetary policy. The debate regarding the optimal institutional design of central banks, independence and conservatism are usually considered to be the most important ingredients for a stable and successful monetary policy. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to deal with the...

This paper examines under what conditions fiscal policy in the form of government spending should contribute to macroeconomic stabilisation. To this end optimal fiscal targeting rules minimising the microfounded social loss are examined in the following settings. Firstly, for the benchmark New Keynesian model, where monetary policy is unconstrained, a neutrality result for fiscal obtains: fisca...

The objective of this paper is to reexamine the monetary mechanism, that is the mechanism through which the monetary authority by controlling certain financial variables achieves (more or less) effective control over nominal income. We propose to argue that the view of the monetary mechanism which has been widely accepted, at least until very recently, by both monetarists and Keynesians and whi...

This paper studies the design of monetary policy in a fiscal federation, such as the European Union. The focus of the analysis is the interaction between the fiscal policy of member countries (regions) and the monetary authority. Each of the countries structures its fiscal policy (spending and taxes) with the interests of its citizens in mind. Thus each country perceives a gain to shifting its ...