Optimal Fiscal And Monetary Policy With Nominal And Indexed Debt

This paper highlights the importance of debt composition in setting optimal fiscal and monetary policy over short-run business cycles and in the long run. Nominal debt as state-contingent debt can be a significant policy tool to reduce the volatility of distortionary government policy, thereby reducing macroeconomic volatility while increasing equilibrium output and consumption. The welfare gain from using nominal debt to hedge against shocks to the government budget is as large as the welfare gain from the ability to issue debt.

This paper highlights the importance of debt composition in setting optimal fiscal and monetary policy over short-run business cycles and in the long run. Nominal debt as state-contingent debt can be a significant policy tool to reduce the volatility of distortionary government policy, thereby reducing macroeconomic volatility while increasing equilibrium output and consumption. The welfare gain from using nominal debt to hedge against shocks to the government budget is as large as the welfare gain from the ability to issue debt.

The initial government debt-to-GDP ratio and the government’s commitment play a pivotal role in determining the welfare-optimal speed of fiscal consolidation in the management of a debt crisis. Under commitment, for low or moderate initial government debt-to-GPD ratios, the optimal consolidation is very slow. A faster pace is optimal when the economy starts from a high level of public debt implying high sovereign risk premia, unless these are suppressed via a bailout by official creditors. Under discretion, the cost of not being able to commit is reflected into a quick consolidation of government debt. Simple monetary-fiscal rules with passive fiscal policy, designed for an environment with “normal shocks”, perform reasonably well in mimicking the Ramsey-optimal response to one-off government debt shocks. When the government can issue also long-term bonds–under commitment–the optimal debt consolidation pace is slower than in the case of short-term bonds only, and entails an increase in the ratio between long and short-term bonds.

A tax-smoothing objective is used to assess the optimal consumption of public debt with respect to maturity and contingencies. This objective motivates the government to make its debt payout contingent on the levels of public outlay and the tax base. If these contingencies are present, but asset prices of non-contingent indexed debt are stochastic, then full tax smoothing dictates an optimal maturity structure of the non-contingent debt. If the certainty-equivalent outlays are the same for each period then the government should guarantee equal real payouts in each period, that is, the debt takes the form of indexed consols. This structure insulates the government's budget constraint from unpredictable variations in the market prices of indexed bonds of various maturities. If contingent debt is precluded, then the government may want to depart from a consol maturity structure to exploit covariances among public outlay, the tax base, and the term structure of real interest rates. However, if moral hazard is the reason for the preclusion of contingent debt, then this consideration also deters exploitation of these covariances and tends to return the optimal solution to the consol maturity structure. The issue of nominal bonds may allow the government to exploit the covariances among public outlay, the tax base, and the rate of inflation. But if moral-hazard explains the absence of contingent debt, then the same reasoning tends to make nominal debt issue undesirable. The bottom line is that an optimal-tax approach to public debt favors bonds that are indexed and long term.

The 20th NBER Macroeconomics Annual, covering questions at the cutting edge of macroeconomics that are central to current policy debates.

In all countries debt and deficits of the public sector are at the heart of economic policy debate. Debt and deficits pose major problems, all the more pressing in Europe because of the Maastricht criteria for entry into European Monetary Union. And in the developing world debt has been associated with major financial crises. This volume, arising from an International Economic Association conference at the Bundesbank, sees academics and policy makers debate the key issues and their implications in theory and practice.