A fiscal perspective on nominal GDP targeting.

This paper studies fiscal policy in a model with nominal gross domestic product (GDP) targeting. We find that, with wage rigidity, nominal GDP targeting generates lower welfare losses than inflation targeting and a Taylor rule. On the other hand, adopting this regime makes standard fiscal policy rul...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Economic Inquiry Vol. 59; no. 4; pp. 1641 - 1661
Main Authors: Abo‐Zaid, Salem, Chen, Huiying, Kamara, Ahmed
Format: Article
Published: Wiley-Blackwell Oct2021
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Online Access:View this record in EBSCOhost
Description
Summary:This paper studies fiscal policy in a model with nominal gross domestic product (GDP) targeting. We find that, with wage rigidity, nominal GDP targeting generates lower welfare losses than inflation targeting and a Taylor rule. On the other hand, adopting this regime makes standard fiscal policy rules, whereby distortionary tax rates are designed to respond to economic activity, dependent on the behavior of inflation instead. We also find that the fiscal multipliers with nominal GDP targeting are smaller than the multipliers under inflation targeting and the Taylor rule. Therefore, nominal GDP targeting does not necessarily outperform other monetary policy rules.