 Useful Government Spending and Macroeconomic (In)stability under Balanced‐Budget RulesJang-Ting Guo and Sharon Harrison Journal of Public Economic Theory, 2008, vol. 10, issue 3, 383-397 Abstract: It has been shown that an otherwise standard one‐sector real business cycle model may exhibit indeterminacy and sunspots under a balanced‐budget rule that consists of fixed and “wasteful” government spending and proportional income taxation. However, the economy always displays saddle‐path stability and equilibrium uniqueness if the government finances endogenous public expenditures with a constant income tax rate. In this paper, we allow for productive or utility‐generating government purchases in either of these specifications. It turns out that the previous indeterminacy results remain unchanged by the inclusion of useful government spending. By contrast, the earlier determinacy results are overturned when public expenditures generate sufficiently strong production or consumption externalities. Our analysis thus illustrates that a balanced‐budget policy recommendation which limits the government's ability to change tax rates does not necessarily stabilize the economy against belief‐driven business cycle fluctuations. Date: 2008 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:jpbect:v:10:y:2008:i:3:p:383-397 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from Access Statistics for this article Journal of Public Economic Theory is currently edited by Rabah Amir, Gareth Myles and Myrna Wooders More articles in Journal of Public Economic Theory from Association for Public Economic Theory Contact information at EDIRC. |
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