Monetary and Fiscal Policies Interactions in a Monetary Union With Country-size Asymmetry

• Author(s): Machado, Celsa Maria Carvalho
• Date: 2011
• Persistent ID: http://hdl.handle.net/10216/7566
• Origin: Repositório Aberto da Universidade do Porto
• Subject(s): ECONOMIA; Porto
• Document Type: Doctoral thesis
• Language: Portuguese

Description

Country-size asymmetry may crucially shape the monetary and fiscal policy interactions in a monetary union. Small and large countries cause different cross-border effects and may have different bargaining power in a stabilization policy game. Strategic interactions arising from different policy objectives and non-cooperative policies might play a significant role in the actual policymaking of a country-size asymmetric monetary union. We analyze cooperative and non cooperative optimizing stabilization policies in a micro-founded New-Keynesian two-country monetary union model, under two policy scenarios. One, where monetary and fiscal policy instruments exert their stabilization roles exclusively through the demand channel without any consequence on debt sustainability; other, where fiscal policy has both demand and supply-side effects but where lump-sum taxes are not enough to ensure fiscal policy solvency. We derive optimal strategic policy mix within an asymmetric country-size monetary union, and assess the effects of some institutional arrangements (cooperation, fiscal constraints, weight-conservative central bank) and of public debt on the effectiveness of policy stabilization. We found that country-size asymmetry within a monetary union qualifies meaningfully monetary and fiscal policy strategic interactions. A small country, suffering larger externality effects and benefiting less from a common monetary policy for stabilization purposes, has to optimally rely on a more active fiscal policy and, as expected, it experiences more welfare costs than a larger country. Furthermore, welfare evaluation of the alternative policy games shows that a large country achieves a better stabilization performance under fiscal leadership and that it may resist to a policy cooperation arrangement. We also found out that large and small debt levels condition the stabilization assignments of the different policy instruments. Moreover, in a large-debt monetary union, and focusing exclusively on stabilization costs, the large country may face incentives to raise public debt while the small country may prefer to be more disciplined. In a small-debt monetary union, reverse incentives can occur: a small country may face incentives to raise debt permanently.