An overlapping generations version of Krugman’s world’s smallest macroeconomic model and fiscal deficit

Yasuhito Tanaka

Journal of Economic Analysis, 2024, vol. 3, issue 4, 101-115

Abstract: This paper attempts to introduce an overlapping generations structure into Paul Krugman's "The world's smallest macroeconomic model" (Krugman (1999)) to examine the implications of fiscal policy, particularly fiscal deficits, in a framework suitable for policy analysis. In that paper, Krugman argued that under the price rigidity assumption, a shortage in the money supply leads to underemployment and recession, so increasing the money supply would eliminate underemployment and restore full employment. But how can the money supply be increased? I show that in order to restore full employment out of a recession, a fiscal deficit is needed to increase the money supply. I also show that in a growing economy, fiscal deficits are necessary to maintain full employment at constant prices or inflation. Fiscal deficits are not only effective in pulling the economy out of recession, they are even necessary for growth to continue without recession or inflation. The fiscal deficit in this paper represents the difference between government spending and government revenues. If this difference is positive, we say that the government is in deficit. Krugman's original model is a one-period static model. I intend to extend this model to a dynamic overlapping generations model.

Keywords: Fiscal deficit; full employment; price rigidity; growth; overlapping generations model (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bba:j00001:v:3:y:2024:i:4:p:101-115:d:258

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