Fiscal Rules and Discretion under Persistent Shocks

Marina Halac and Pierre Yared

No 18545, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: This paper studies the optimal level of discretion in policymaking. We consider a fiscal policy model where the government has time-inconsistent preferences with a present-bias towards public spending. The government chooses a fiscal rule to trade off its desire to commit to not overspend against its desire to have flexibility to react to privately observed shocks to the value of spending. We analyze the optimal fiscal rule when the shocks are persistent. Unlike under i.i.d. shocks, we show that the ex-ante optimal rule is not sequentially optimal, as it provides dynamic incentives. The ex-ante optimal rule exhibits history dependence, with high shocks leading to an erosion of future fiscal discipline compared to low shocks, which lead to the reinstatement of discipline. The implied policy distortions oscillate over time given a sequence of high shocks, and can force the government to accumulate maximal debt and become immiserated in the long run.

JEL-codes: D02 D82 E6 H1 P16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dge and nep-pbe
Note: EFG POL
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Published as Fiscal Rules and Discretion Under Persistent Shocks Marina Halac1,2 andPierre Yared1,3,† Article first published online: 3 OCT 2014 DOI: 10.3982/ECTA11207 © 2014 The Econometric Society Issue Econometrica Econometrica Volume 82, Issue 5, pages 1557–1614, September 2014

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Related works:
Journal Article: Fiscal Rules and Discretion Under Persistent Shocks (2014)
Journal Article: Fiscal Rules and Discretion Under Persistent Shocks (2014)
Working Paper: Fiscal Rules and Discretion under Persistent Shocks (2013)
Working Paper: Fiscal Rules and Discretion under Persistent Shocks (2012)
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