Fiscal policy restrictions are often criticized for limiting the ability of governments to react to business cycle fluctuations. Therefore, the adoption of quantitative restrictions is viewed as inevitably leading to increased macroeconomic volatility. In this paper we use data from 48 U.S. states to investigate how budget rules affect fiscal policy outcomes. Our key findings are that (1) stric...

We examine the impact of different degrees of fiscal feedback on debt in an economy with nominal rigidities where monetary policy is optimal. We look at the extent to which different degrees of fiscal feedback enhances or detracts from the ability of the monetary authorities to stabilise output and inflation. Using an objective function derived from utility, we find the optimal level of fiscal ...

Imperfectly competitive macroeconomic models typically assume a symmetric equilibrium with identical firms, despite the fact that most industries are characterised by substantial degrees of firm heterogeneity. We examine how inter-firm efficiency gaps affect fiscal policy effectiveness under monopolistic competition.  2000 Elsevier Science S.A. All rights reserved.

Since the proof of Theorem 1 is rather cumbersome, it is useful to break it into several lemmas.