Collaborative Research: Optimal Rules for Monetary and Fiscal Policy

该项目有助于从经济福利的角度分析最优公共政策。关于税收政策和货币政策的传统文献似乎往往建立在互不相容、甚至可能相互矛盾的基础之上。一种分析是使用微观、纯实际的模型进行的，强调最大限度地减少私人激励扭曲的目标；另一种是使用名义变量影响实际分配的宏观经济模型，涉及稳定通货膨胀和总体经济活动。该项目的一个目标是说明如何为这两个调查提供统一的基础，不仅表明这些不同的公共政策目标在得到适当理解时并不冲突，而且表明货币当局和财政当局在理想情况下应如何考虑与另一个领域有关的传统考虑因素。这两个领域最佳政策的一个重要原则是，政策应以规则为基础，而不是纯粹自由裁量，因为私营部门的预期在确定政策效果方面很重要。对政策规则的承诺往往被认为排除了将政策用于短期稳定的可能性，而基于规则的政策制定往往因此而遭到政策制定者的抵制。相反，这项研究旨在展示如何设计政策规则，使政策能够应对意想不到的干扰，而不允许与自由裁量政策相关的偏见。根据“目标规则”，政策当局致力于在某些经济变量的预测路径中实现一定的关系，而不预先定义其工具所需的状态应急调整；许多央行的通胀预测目标程序就是一个例子。这项研究既试图澄清理想情况下应该由央行实施的目标规则的形式，也试图确定目标规则在财政政策中的有用性。它还将讨论多个政策当局之间协调的可取程度。更广泛的影响。拟议的研究旨在澄清在货币政策和税收政策领域的公共政策应依据的原则，以便最好地服务于经济效率和宏观经济稳定的目标。这项研究的结果将不仅在学术研究人员中传播，而且还将传播给政策制定者--特别是美国和海外的中央银行，以及国际货币基金组织等国际组织。研究还将与调查人员的教学，特别是研究生一级的教学相结合，预计研究生研究助理将被介绍其重要的研究技能和潜在的研究课题。

This project contributes to the analysis of optimal public policy from the standpoint of economic welfare. The traditional literatures on tax policy and on monetary policy often seem to be based on incompatible, possibly contradictory foundations. One analysis is conducted using microeconomic, purely real models, and emphasizes the goal of minimizing distortions of private incentives; the other is conducted using macroeconomic models in which nominal variables affect real allocations, and is concerned with stabilization of inflation and of aggregate economic activity. A goal of this project is to show how unified foundations can be provided for both inquiries, showing not only that these distinct goals of public policy are not in conflict when properly understood, but also how both monetary and fiscal authorities should, ideally, take into account considerations traditionally associated with the other domain.An important principle of optimal policy in both domains is that policy should be rule-based, rather than purely discretionary, owing to the importance of private-sector anticipations in determining the effects of policy. Commitment to a policy rule is often thought to preclude the use of policy for short-run stabilization, and rule-based policymaking is often resisted by policymakers on this ground. This research aims to show instead how policy rules can be designed, which allow policy to respond to unanticipated disturbances, without allowing the biases associated with discretionary policy. Under a "targeting rule", a policy authority is committed to achieve a certain relationship among the projected paths of certain economic variables, without defining in advance the required state-contingent adjustments of its instruments; the inflation-forecast targeting procedures of many central banks provide an example. This research seeks both to clarify the form of targeting rule that should ideally be implemented by a central bank, and to establish the usefulness of targeting rules for fiscal policy as well. It will also address the degree to which coordination between multiple policy authorities is desirable. Broader impacts. The proposed research aims to clarify the principles upon which public policy should be based, in the areas of both monetary policy and tax policy, in order to best serve the goals of economic efficiency and macroeconomic stability. The results of this research will be disseminated, not only among academic researchers, but to policymakers as well - in particular, to central banks both in the U.S. and abroad, and to international organizations such as the IMF. The research will also be integrated with the teaching, especially at the graduate level, of the investigators, and it is expected that graduate research assistants will be introduced to important research skills and potential research topics of their own.