Monetary and fiscal policy interaction

在2008年金融危机之前，宏观经济学家的共识是将货币政策和财政政策分开研究。央行独立性通常被认为是有保证的，货币政策而不是财政政策对经济的稳定负有责任。全球金融危机挑战了这一共识。当危机演变为主权债务危机，政府债券收益率大幅上升时，欧洲央行(ECB)行长马里奥·德拉吉(Mario Draghi)宣布，欧洲央行将采取一切必要手段确保政府债券市场的稳定。通过在做出政策决定时将政府债券收益率考虑在内，欧洲央行模糊了货币政策和财政政策之间一度明确的区别。然而，不仅央行不再完全独立于财政当局的行动，财政稳定政策本身也卷土重来。最近的研究表明，当央行的主要政策工具停留在零的下限时，财政刺激方案可能在刺激经济方面特别有效。这些事态发展表明，在后危机时代，财政政策和货币政策紧密相连。货币和财政政策的相互作用是我提出的研究议程的中心焦点。我打算研究这种相互作用对产出、通胀和公共债务等关键宏观变量的影响。拟议的研究议程包括三个部分：首先，我调查了纳入财政变量在多大程度上有助于解决货币经济学中一个令人困惑的观察结果。令人困惑的是，使用叙述性方法(即通过研究政策制定者的意图)获得的货币政策创新，与估计标准向量自回归模型获得的创新截然不同。第二个项目始于观察到通胀和公共赤字之间的关系是时变的。问题是，这些变动是否与货币和财政政策不断变化的相互作用有关，并可能为理论建模提供指导。在第三个项目中，我计划让有关货币政策和财政政策相互关联性的模型接受现实世界的测试。我会问，德国上世纪30年代实施的政策是否符合非常规财政和货币政策下限为零的假设。德国之所以特别令人感兴趣，是因为由于德国在1923年经历了恶性通货膨胀，政府无法宣布未来将出现更高的通胀。因此，这种突显预期转变的解释是否适用于德国是值得怀疑的。第三个项目旨在找到另一种解释。

Before the financial crisis of 2008, the consensus among macroeconomists was to study monetary and fiscal policy separately. Central bank independence was generally seen as assured and monetary, not fiscal policy, was responsible for the stabilization of the economy. The global financial crisis has challenged this consensus. When the crisis grew into a sovereign debt crisis and yields on government debt rose sharply, Mario Draghi, the President of of the European Central Bank (ECB), announced that the ECB would ensure the stability of government bond markets by any means necessary. By taking government bond yields into account when making its policy decision, the ECB blurs the once clear-cut distinction between monetary and fiscal policy. Yet, not only is the central bank no longer entirely independent from the actions of the fiscal authority, fiscal stabilization policy itself has made a comeback. Recent research demonstrates that fiscal stimulus packages could be particularly effective at stimulating the economy when the main policy instrument of the central bank is stuck at the zero lower bound. These developments demonstrate that fiscal and monetary policy are intimately connected in the post-crisis world. The interaction of monetary and fiscal policy is the central focus of my proposed research agenda. I intend to study the effects of the interaction on key macro variables such as output, inflation, and public debt. The proposed research agenda has three parts: first, I investigate to what extend the inclusion of fiscal variables helps to solve a puzzling observation in monetary economics. The puzzle is that the innovations to monetary policy one obtains using the narrative approach, i.e. by studying the intentions of policy makers, are very different from the innovations one obtains estimating a standard Vector Autoregression model. The second project starts from the observation that the relationship between inflation and public deficits is time-varying. The question is whether these movements are related to the changing interaction of monetary and fiscal policy and might provide guidelines for theoretical modeling. In the third project, I plan to subject the models about the interconnectedness of monetary and fiscal policy to a real-world test. I will ask whether the policies applied in Germany during the 1930s conform to the hypothesis of unconventional fiscal and monetary policy at the zero lower bound. Germany is of special interest because since Germany had experienced a hyperinflation in 1923, the government was not able to announce that there will be higher inflation in the future. Therefore it is questionable whether the explanation, which highlights the shift in expectations, is applicable for Germany. The third project aims at finding an alternative explanation.