Monetary policy and sovereign debt vulnerability

Galo Nuño Barrau and Carlos Thomas

No 1517, Working Papers from Banco de España

Abstract: We investigate the trade-offs between price stability and the sustainability of sovereign debt, using a small open economy model where the government issues nominal defaultable debt and chooses fiscal and monetary policy under discretion. Inflation reduces the real value of outstanding debt, thus making it more sustainable; but it also raises nominal yields and entails direct welfare costs. We compare this scenario with a situation in which the government gives up the ability to deflate debt away, e.g. by issuing foreign currency debt or joining a monetary union with an anti-inflationary stance. We find that the benefits of giving up this adjustment margin outweigh the costs, both for our preferred calibration and for a wide range of parameter values.

Keywords: monetary-fiscal interactions; discretion; sovereign default; continuous time; optimal stopping (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E5 E62 F34 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 47 pages
Date: 2015-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cba, nep-dge, nep-mac, nep-mon and nep-opm
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Monetary Policy and Sovereign Debt Vulnerability (2016)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bde:wpaper:1517

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