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The surge in energy prices in 2022 has been a defining factor behind the increase in euro area inflation. We assess the impact of “unconventional fiscal policy,” defined as the set of fiscal measures, possibly expansionary, motivated by a desire to mute the effects of the increase in energy prices and to lower inflation. Overall, we find that these unconventional measures reduced euro area inflation by 1 to 2 percentage points in 2022 and may avoid an undershoot later on. When nonlinearities in the Phillips curve are taken into account, the net effect is to reduce inflation by about 0.5 percentage points in 2021-24, and keep it nearer to its target. About one-third to one-half of the reduction in 2022 reflects the direct effects of the measures on headline inflation, with much of the remainder reflecting the lower pass-through to core inflation. The fiscal measures were deficit-financed but had limited effects on raising inflation by stimulating demand and instead modestly helped to stabilize longer-term inflation expectations. Looking ahead, the prospective decline in inflation in the euro area is partly due to fortunate circumstances, with energy prices falling from their 2022 peaks and their pass-through effects fading, and with less economic overheating than in economies such as the United States. Implementing similar measures in the face of a more persistent increase in energy prices, or in a more overheated economy, would have caused a more persistent rise in core inflation.
Unconventional fiscal policy uses announcements of future increases in consumption taxes to generate inflation expectations and accelerate consumption expenditure. It is budget neutral and time consistent. We provide preliminary evidence for the effectiveness of such policies using changes in value-added tax (VAT) and household survey data for Poland. We find households increased their inflation expectations and willingness to purchase durables before the increase in VAT. Future research has to ensure income, wealth effects, or intratemporal substitution channels cannot explain these results and ideally exploit exogenous variation in VAT in a fixed nominal interest rate environment.
Unconventional fiscal policies incentivize households to accelerate consumption by generating future consumer price ination, and offer an alternative to unconventional monetary policy (Correia et al. (2013)). We use a natural experiment to study the causal effect of unconventional fiscal policies on consumption expenditure via the inflation-expectations channel. The German administration unexpectedly announced in November 2005 a three-percentage-point increase in value-added tax (VAT) effective in 2007. This shock increased German households' inflation expectations during 2006, as well as actual inflation in 2007. Matched households in other European countries serve as counterfactuals in a difference-in-differences identification design. German households' willingness to purchase durable goods increased by 34% after the shock, compared to matched foreign households. Income or wealth effects do not appear to drive these results, and we do not find evidence of intratemporal substitution from non-durable to durable consumption.
When the zero lower bound on nominal interest rates binds, monetary policy cannot provide appropriate stimulus. We show that in the standard New Keynesian model, tax policy can deliver such stimulus at no cost and in a time-consistent manner. There is no need to use inefficient policies such as wasteful public spending or future commitments to inflate. We conclude that in the New Keynesian model, the zero bound on nominal interest rates is not a relevant constraint on both fiscal and monetary policy.
Unconventional fiscal policy uses announcements of future increases in consumption taxes to generate inflation expectations and accelerate consumption expenditure. It is budget neutral and time consistent. We exploit a unique natural experiment for an empirical test of the effectiveness of unconventional fiscal policy. To comply with European Union law, the German government announced in November 2005 an unexpected 3-percentage-point increase in value-added tax (VAT), effective in 2007. The shock increased households' inflation expectations during 2006 and actual inflation in 2007. Germans' willingness to purchase durables increased by 34% after the shock, compared to before and to matched households in other European countries not exposed to the VAT shock. Income, wealth effects, or intratemporal substitution cannot explain these results.
We show that in a New Keynesian model with household heterogeneity, fiscal policy can be a perfect substitute for monetary policy: three simple conditions for consumption taxes, labor taxes, and the government debt level are sufficient to induce the same consumption and labor supply of each household and, thus, the same allocation as interest rate policies. When monetary policy is constrained by a binding lower bound, a currency union, or an exchange rate peg, fiscal policy can therefore replicate any allocation that hypothetically unconstrained monetary policy would generate.
When the zero lower bound on nominal interest rate binds, monetary policy makers may lack traditional tools to stimulate aggregate demand. We investigate whether "unconventional" fiscal policy, in the form of pre-announced consumption tax changes, has the potential to meaningfully shift durables purchases intertemporally and how it is affected by consumer credit. In particular, we test whether car sales react in anticipation of future sales tax changes, leveraging 57 pre-announced changes in state sales tax rates from 1999-2017. We find evidence for substantial tax elasticities, with car sales rising by over 8% in the month before a 1% increase in the sales tax rate. Responses are heterogeneous across households and sensitive to supply of credit. Consumers with high credit risk scores are most able to pull purchases forward. At the same time, other effects such as customer composition and attention lead to an even larger tax elasticity during recessions, despite these credit frictions. We discuss policy implications and the likely magnitudes of tax changes necessary for any substantive long-term responses.
This paper addresses three questions about unconventional monetary policies. First, what policies were tried, and with what objectives? Second, were policies effective? And third, what role might these policies continue to play in the future?
With a binding effective lower bound on interest rates and large government deficits, conventional policies are unviable and policymakers resort to unconventional policies, which target households' expectations directly. Using unique micro data and a difference-in-differences strategy, we assess the effectiveness of unconventional fiscal policy and forward guidance, both of which aim to stimulate consumption via raising households' inflation expectations. All households' inflation expectations and spending plans react to unconventional fiscal policy. Instead, households, contrary to experts, do not react to forward guidance. We argue that policies aiming to affect households directly are ineffective if (non-expert) households do not understand them.
The large recession that followed the Global Financial Crisis of 2008-09 triggered unprecedented monetary policy easing around the world. Most central banks in advanced economies deployed new instruments to affect credit conditions and to provide liquidity at a large scale after shortterm policy rates reached their effective lower bound. In this paper, we study if this new set of tools, commonly labeled as unconventional monetary policies (UMP), should still be used when economic conditions and interest rates normalize. In particular, we study the optimality of asset purchase programs by using an estimated non-linear DSGE model with a banking sector and long-term private and public debt for the United States. We find that the benefits of using such UMP in normal times are substantial, equivalent to 1.45 percent of consumption. However, the benefits from using UMP are shock-dependent and mostly arise when the economy is hit by financial shocks. When more traditional business cycle shocks (such as supply and demand shocks) hit the economy, the benefits of using UMP are negligible or zero.