Carl E. Walsh

Testing Intertemporal Budget Constraints: Theory and Applications to U.S. Federal Budget and Current Account Deficits

This paper extends previous tests of intertemporal budget balance and present value relationships by expanding the set of allowable deficit processes and by deriving a testable condition that is sufficient to ensure intertemporal budget balance as long as the expected discount rate is strictly positive. Using these tests, the authors find that both the postwar federal budget deficit process and the process governing accumulation of U.S. assets by foreigners are consistent with intertemporal budget balance. Copyright 1991 by Ohio State University Press.

Common trends, the government's budget constraint, and revenue smoothing

Abstract The requirement that the governments budget be balanced in present value terms is shown to be equivalent to the condition that government expenditures inclusive of interest, tax receipts and seignorage be cointegrated. The condition is in fact stronger, requiring that the deficit inclusive of interest be stationary. Stationarity of the net-of-interest deficit is neither necessary nor sufficient for intertemporal budget balance. However, it does have implications for Barros tax smoothing hypothesis. Data for the period 1890–1986 are consistent with intertemporal budget balance but not with tax smoothing.

Labor Market Search, Sticky Prices, and Interest Rate Policies

In this paper, a simple search model of the labor market is combined with sticky prices to investigate the dynamic response of the economy to nominal interest rate shocks. The framework allows the respective roles of labor market search, nominal price rigidities, and policy inertia in accounting for the impact of monetary policy shocks to be studied. Labor market rigidities introduced by the process of matching job seekers with job vacancies amplify the real impact and reduce the inflation impact of a monetary policy shock. As a result, significantly less price rigidity is required; for example, the dynamic response of output and inflation in the new Keynesian model with a Walrasian labor market and only 15% of firms optimally adjusting prices each period can be replicated in the labor market search model when a more realistic 50% of firms optimally adjust their price each period.

Speed Limit Policies: The Output Gap and Optimal Monetary Policy

In a standard New Keynesian model, a myopic central bank concerned with stabilizing inflation and changes in the output gap will implement a policy under discretion that replicates the optimal, timeless perspective, precommitment policy. By stabilizing output gap changes, the central bank imparts inertia into output and inflation that is absent under pure discretion. Even a fully optimizing (i.e., non-myopic) central bank operating in a discretionary policy environment achieves better social outcomes if it focuses on inflation and changes in the output gap than are achieved under inflation targeting.

Is New Zealand's Reserve Bank Act of 1989 an optimal central bank contract?

This paper evaluates the Reserve Bank of New Zealand Act of 1989 from a principal-agent perspective, arguing that the act represents a dismissal rule. The optimal dismissal rule requires that the central banker be dismissed whenever inflation exceeds a critical level that depends on aggregate supply disturbances and measurement error in the inflation index. This is essentially the structure established by the act. The scope for renegotiating the target rate, however, creates an incentive for the government to set the critical rate too high. Consequently, the inflation bias of discretion is reduced but not completely eliminated. Copyright 1995 by Ohio State University Press.

Implications of a Changing Economic Structure for the Strategy of Monetary Policy

This paper surveys the implications of uncertainty for the design of monetary policy. Among the topics discussed are the impact of imperfect or noisy information on the performance of simple rules, the performance of rules that are robust to the exogenous disturbance processes, the effects of parameter uncertainty, and the implications of robust control. The analysis is conducted using a new Keynesian framework. One finding is that difference rules seem to perform well in the presence of imperfect information about the output gap.

Accountability, Transparency, and Inflation Targeting

Inflation targeting regimes define a performance measure for the central bank. A regime that places a large (small) weight on achieving the target is analogous to a high- (low-) powered incentive scheme. High-powered incentive structures promote accountability but may distort stabilization policy. The optimal power under inflation targeting is derived under perfect and imperfect information. The fundamental trade-off between accountability and stabilization depends on the degree of transparency, defined as the ability to monitor the central banks performance. Multiplicative uncertainty increases the optimal weight to place on achieving an inflation target.

Teaching Inflation Targeting: An Analysis for Intermediate Macro

Abstract Over the last decade, many central banks have adopted policies known as inflation targeting. If intermediate-level macroeconomics students are to be prepared to think about current policy issues, it is important to provide them with an introduction to the macroeconomic implications of inflation targeting. Unfortunately, the standard aggregate demand-aggregate supply frameworks commonly used to teach intermediate macroeconomics are not well suited for this task because they are expressed in terms of output and the price level and because they fail to make explicit the policy objectives of the central bank. The author provides a simple graphical device involving the output gap and the inflation rate that overcomes these problems and that can be used to teach intermediate macroeconomics students about inflation targeting.

The Lender of Last Resort Function Under a Currency Board: The Case of Argentina

No grand solution appears to exist for the problems that seem inevitable in the Argentine system, in which the Central Bank is both lender of last resort and currency board, providing full convertibility between pesos and U.S. dollars. Argentinas strategy therefore must turn on actively strengthening its banking systems to reduce solvency risks and on building its reserves. Within the current rules of the game, Argentinas central bank (BCRA) is charged with being the lender of last resort as well as providing full convertibility between pesos and U.S. dollars - two objectives with one instrument, namely, reserves. Within those rules, it may well be that the balance of responsibilities needs to shift. Complete dollarization can significantly reduce risks but not entirely eliminate them. If the BCRA can concentrate more on building up reserves and helping to ward off crises of confidence in the currency, perhaps the banking system can protect itself better from liquidity shocks. But this will require, among other things, consolidation of the sector (which could give it greater access to outside liquidity) and prudential strengthening of the system. Triage of weaker banks should continue and not await another crisis. More experience with the new liquidity policy is needed and so is reform of the settlement system, as it affects the functioning of the interbank market, which is essential for containing crises. Essentially, however, no grand solution seems to exist for the problems that seem inevitable in a system where the central bank is also the currency board. Argentinas strategy must therefore turn on actively strengthening its banking systems to reduce the risks of insolvency. This paper - a product of the Finance and Private Sector Development Division, Policy Research Department - is part of a larger effort in the department to advise member countries on financial sector policy.

Seigniorage and tax smoothing in the United States 1914-1986

Models in which fiscal and monetary authorities cooperate to minimize the distortionary costs of raising revenue to finance an exogenous stream of government expenditures are shown to have implications for the long-run relationships between government expenditures, tax revenues and seigniorage. First, tax and seigniorage revenue should be cointegrated. Second, the cointegrating vector linking taxes and seigniorage should be only one of the cointegrating vectors linking expenditures, tax revenues and seigniorage. Third, the deficit net-of-interest should be nonstationary. These implications are tested using annual U.S. data from the period 1914 to 1986. The data reject all three implications of the theory.