Inflation Targeting and Debt: Lessons from Brazil

Carlo Favero and Francesco Giavazzi ()

No 10390, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Studying the recent experience of Brazil the paper explains how default risk is at the centre of the mechanism through which an emerging market central bank that targets inflation might lose control of inflation--in other words of the mechanism through which the economy might move from a regime of 'monetary dominance' to one of 'fiscal dominance'. The literature, from Sargent and Wallace (1981) to the modern fiscal theory of the price level has discussed how an unsustainable fiscal policy may hinder the effectiveness of monetary policy, to the point that an increase in interest rates can have a perverse effect on inflation. We show that the presence of default risk reinforces the possibility that a vicious circle might arise, making the fiscal constraint on monetary policy more stringent.

JEL-codes: E4 E6 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mon
Note: IFM
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (75)

Published as Giavezzi, Francesco, Ilan Goldfajn and Santiago Herrera (eds.) Inflation Targeting, Debt, and the Brazilian Experience, 1999 to 2003. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2005.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w10390.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Inflation Targeting and Debt: Lessons from Brazil (2004)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:10390

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w10390

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().