Aurélien Eyquem

Government spending, monetary policy, and the real exchange rate

Both the traditional Mundell-Fleming-Dornbusch framework and standard dynamic general-equilibrium models with complete financial markets predict that an unanticipated increase in public spending in a given country appreciates its currency in real terms. This prediction, however, contradicts the findings of a number of recent empirical studies, which instead document a significant and persistent depreciation of the real exchange rate following an expansionary government spending shock. In this paper, we rationalize the findings of the empirical literature by proposing a small-open-economy model that features three key ingredients: incomplete and imperfect international financial markets, sticky prices, and a not-too-aggressive monetary policy. The model predicts that in response to an unexpected increase in public expenditure, the long-term real interest rate rises less than the countrys debt elastic interest-rate premium. As a result, the long-term real interest rate differential vis-a-vis the rest of the world falls, leading the domestic currency to depreciate in real terms. We establish this result both analytically, within a special version of the model, and numerically for the more general case.

Welfare Reversals in a Monetary Union

We show that welfare can be lower under complete financial markets than under autarky in a monetary union with home bias, sticky prices and asymmetric shocks. Such a monetary union is a second-best environment in which the structure of financial markets affects risk-sharing but also shapes the dynamics of inflation rates and the welfare costs from nominal rigidities. Welfare reversals arise for a variety of empirically plausible degrees of price stickiness when the Marshall-Lerner condition is met. These results carry over a model with active fiscal policies, and hold within a medium-scale model, although to a weaker extent.

A NOTE ON THE BUSINESS CYCLE IMPLICATIONS OF TRADE IN INTERMEDIATE GOODS

Trade in intermediate goods is an important feature of trade in developed small open economies. We show that a model that assumes trade in intermediate goods brings the dynamics of an otherwise standard small open economy closer to what is observed in the data. With trade in intermediate goods, movements of international relative prices affect the economy through an additional channel, denoted the “cost channel.†A model embedding this channel comes closer to business cycle data in several dimensions compared to models with trade in final goods only. It increases the share of output variance explained by foreign shocks, lowers the exchange rate pass-through, and delivers a positive international correlation of outputs. In addition, the matching of other business cycle moments is at least as good as in a model with trade in final goods only.

A Tale of Tax Policies in Open Economies

Recent financial crises in Europe as well as the periodic battles in the U.S. over the debt ceiling point to the importance of fiscal discipline among developed countries. This paper develops an open economy model, calibrated to the U.S. and a subset of the EMU, to evaluate the impact of various permanent tax changes. The first set of experiments considers a targeted one percentage point reduction in the government deficit-to-GDP ratio through raising one of : the consumption tax, the labor income tax, or the capital income tax. In terms of welfare, the consumption tax is found to be the least costly of the tax increases. A second set of experiments looks at deficit-neutral tax changes : partially replacing the capital income tax with either a higher labor income tax or higher consumption tax ; and partially replacing the labor income tax with an increased consumption tax. Reducing reliance on capital income taxation is welfare-enhancing, although it leads to short term losses. Reducing labor income taxation improves international competitiveness and is welfare-improving.

Modeling tails of aggregate economic processes in a stochastic growth model

An annual sequence of wages in England starting in 1245 is used. It is shown that a standard AK-type growth model with capital externality and stochastic productivity shocks is unable to explain important features of the data. Random returns to scale are then considered. Moderate episodes of increasing returns to scale and growth are shown to be compatible with convergence of wages process towards a unique stationary distribution. This holds true for other relevant values such as GDP and/or capital stock. Furthermore, random returns to scale generate heteroskedasticity, a feature common to macroeconomic time series. Finally, the limit distribution of real wages displays fat tails if returns to scale are episodically increasing. Several inference results supporting randomness of returns to scale are provided.

Government Spending, Monetary Policy, and the Real Exchange Rate

A robust prediction across a wide range of open-economy macroeconomic models is that an unanticipated increase in public spending in a given country appreciates it currency in real terms. This result, however, contradicts the findings of a number of recent empirical studies, which instead document a signifi...cant and persistent depreciation of the real exchange rate following an expansionary government spending shock. In this paper, we rationalize the findings of the empirical literature by proposing a small-open-economy model that features three key ingredients : incomplete and imperfect international financial markets, sticky prices, and a not-too-aggressive monetary policy. The model predicts that in response to an unexpected increase in public expenditures, the risk-adjusted long-term real interest rate falls, causing the real exchange rate to depreciate. We establish this result both analytically, within a special version of the model, and numerically for the more general case.

Episodes of War and Peace in an Estimated Open Economy Model

We analyze the effects of world wars on the macroeconomic dynamics of the U.S., France, Germany, and the UK, by means of an estimated open-economy model. The model allows wars to affect the economy through capital depreciation, sovereign default, a military draft, household preferences, and spillovers on other exogenous processes (productivity, investment, trade, policy variables). If the bulk of fluctuations during war episodes can be explained by the rise in government spending in the U.S., other factors are crucial in other countries. We also discuss the size and state-dependence of public spending multipliers, and a counterfactual welfare exercise.

On the Role of Debt Maturity in a Model with Sovereign Risk and Financial Frictions

We develop a model with financial frictions and sovereign default risk where the maturity of public debt is allowed to be larger than one period. When the debt portfolio has longer average maturities, public debt increases less in the event of a crisis, reducing the size of the subsequent fiscal consolidation through distorsionary taxes or public spending, with positive effects on welfare. In addition, we provide some results suggesting that optimized fiscal responses to a crisis depend on the average maturity of the debt portfolio.

A Tale Of Tax Policies In Open Economies

To evaluate fiscal policy reforms for Euro‐area countries, this article develops and calibrates a small open economy model. Debt reduction reforms require higher tax rates in the short term in exchange for lower rates in the long term as the debt‐servicing burden falls. Using the capital income tax to implement such a policy leads to welfare gains; the consumption tax, a very small welfare gain; and the labor income tax, a welfare loss. Holding fixed the long‐run debt–output ratio, offsetting a lower capital income tax with either a higher labor income or consumption tax generally yields welfare gains.

Climatic Conditions and Productivity: An Impact Evaluation in Pre-industrial England

In this paper, we bridge economic data and climatic time series to assess the vulnerability of a pre-industrial economy to changes in climatic conditions. We propose an economic model to extract a measure of total productivity from English data (real wages and land rents) in the pre-industrial period. This measure of total productivity is then related to temperatures and precipitations. We find that lower (respectively higher) precipitations (resp. temperatures) enhance productivity. Further, temperatures also have non-linear effects on productivity : large temperature variations lower productivity. We perform counterfactual exercises and quantify the effects of large increases in temperatures on productivity, GDP and welfare.