Government Finance in Emerging Markets: Currency Crises, Debt Policy and Procyclical Fiscal Policy

该项目研究了政府财政、货币危机经济学、政府债务的可持续性、发展中国家的财政政策行为以及价格水平的财政理论中的一些相互关联的问题。尽管实际汇率对政府财政的影响是显著的，但在文献中却被忽视了。文献通过所谓的资产负债表效应，即实际汇率变动对现有政府债务估值的影响，认识到实际汇率的重要性。然而，文献大多忽略了实际汇率对政府通过其债务融资的流动(基本财政余额)的影响。该项目认为，首先，在新兴市场，实际汇率对基本余额的影响很大，对于理解货币危机的动态非常重要。该项目寻求推进货币危机理论，以捕捉这些影响。该项目还试图将关于货币危机和政府债务可持续性(或财政可持续性)的文献联系起来，将实际汇率的影响纳入小型开放经济体商业周期的标准、完全具体的随机模型。通过对文献的这些扩展，经济学理论应该能够解释新兴市场政府借款的局限性、新兴市场财政政策的顺周期性(政府倾向于加剧、而不是平息商业周期的影响)，以及名义债务证券的定价。最后，拟议的研究试图扩大关于货币危机、财政可持续性分析和价格水平财政理论之间的新的联系，展示后者如何无缝地纳入前几种分析中使用的标准模型。这项研究将产生广泛的影响，部分原因是它使宏观经济学的不同研究领域相互之间有了更大的联系。因此，它应该加强跨子学科的协同效应。货币危机和财政可持续性这一主题在公共政策领域具有很高的时代性和重要性。因此，这项工作有可能对政策制定者如何看待政府债务、财政政策的运作以及货币危机的前因后果产生重大影响。调查员最近为世界银行开发了一个关于财政可持续性的学习模块。这成功地向在广泛国家生活和工作的经济学家传播了关于这一主题的知识。通过这种渠道，可能会从目前的项目中产生类似的惠益，但不一定附属于世界银行。

This project studies a number of interrelated issues in government finance, the economics of currency crises, the sustainability of government debt, the behavior of fiscal policy in developing countries, and the fiscal theory of the price level. Although the effects of the real exchange rate on government finance are significant, they have been neglected in the literature. The literature recognizes the importance of the real exchange rate through so-called balance sheet effects, i.e. the effect of real exchange rate movements on the valuation of existing government debt. However, the literature has mostly neglected the impact of the real exchange rate on the flows (the primary fiscal balance) via which the government finances its debt. The project argues, first, that the effects of the real exchange rate on the primary balance are significant in emerging markets, and are important in understanding the dynamics of currency crises. The project seeks to advance the theory of currency crises in order to capture these effects. The project also seeks to link the literature on currency crises and government debt sustainability (or fiscal sustainability) by incorporating the effects of the real exchange rate within standard fully-specified stochastic models of the business cycle in small open economies. These extensions to the literature should allow economic theory to explain the limitations on government borrowing in emerging markets, the procyclicality of fiscal policy in emerging markets (the tendency of the government to exacerbate rather than smooth the effects of the business cycle), and the pricing of nominal debt securities. Finally, the proposed research seeks to expand the nascent links between the literatures on currency crises, fiscal sustainability analysis and the fiscal theory of the price level, by showing how the latter can be seamlessly incorporated into standard models that are used in the former types of analysis. This research will have a broad impact, in part, because it brings diverse areas of research in macroeconomics into greater contact with one another. So it should enhance synergies across sub-disciplines. The subject matter, currency crises and fiscal sustainability, is highly topical and important in the public policy arena. So this work has the potential to have a significant impact on how policy makers think about government debt, the functioning of fiscal policy, and the causes and consequences of currency crises. The investigator has recently developed a learning module on fiscal sustainability for the World Bank. This has been successful in disseminating knowledge about the subject matter to economists living and working in a wide range of countries. Through this type of channel, similar benefits, not necessarily affiliated with the World Bank, might be expected to emerge from the current project.