Econometrica

Journal Of The Econometric Society

An International Society for the Advancement of Economic
Theory in its Relation to Statistics and Mathematics

Edited by: Guido W. Imbens • Print ISSN: 0012-9682 • Online ISSN: 1468-0262

Econometrica: Sep, 2014, Volume 82, Issue 5

Fiscal Rules and Discretion under Persistent Shocks

https://doi.org/10.3982/ECTA11207
p. 1557-1614

Marina Halac, Pierre Yared

This paper studies the optimal level of discretion in policymaking. We consider a fiscal policy model where the government has time‐inconsistent preferences with a present bias toward public spending. The government chooses a fiscal rule to trade off its desire to commit to not overspend against its desire to have flexibility to react to privately observed shocks to the value of spending. We analyze the optimal fiscal rule when the shocks are persistent. Unlike under independent and identically distributed shocks, we show that the ex ante optimal rule is not sequentially optimal, as it provides dynamic incentives. The ex ante optimal rule exhibits history dependence, with high shocks leading to an erosion of future fiscal discipline compared to low shocks, which lead to the reinstatement of discipline. The implied policy distortions oscillate over time given a sequence of high shocks, and can force the government to accumulate maximal debt and become immiserated in the long run.


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Supplemental Material

Supplement to "Fiscal Rules and Discretion Under Persistent Shocks"

This supplement provides proofs for our results in the extension to a continuum of types in Appendix B and describes the algorithm that we use to compute the equilibria in Section 5.3 of the paper.