Zusammenfassung: | The fiscal theory says that the price level is determined by the ratio of nominal debt to the present value of real primary surpluses. I analyze long-term debt and optimal policy in the fiscal theory. I find that the maturity structure of the debt matters. For example, it determines whether news of future deficits implies current inflation or future inflation. When long-term debt is present, the government can trade current inflation for future inflation by debt operations; this tradeoff is not present if the government rolls over short-term debt. The maturity structure of outstanding debt acts as a "budget constraint" determining which periods' price levels the government can affect by debt variation alone. In addition, debt policy-the expected pattern of future state-contingent debt sales, repurchases and redemptions-matters crucially for the effects of a debt operation. I solve for optimal debt policies to minimize the variance of inflation. I find cases in which long-term debt helps to stabilize inflation. I also find that the optimal policy produces time series that are similar to U.S. surplus and debt time series. To understand the data, I must assume that debt policy offsets the inflationary impact of cyclical surplus shocks, rather than causing price level disturbances by policy-induced shocks. Shifting the objective from price level variance to inflation variance, the optimal policy produces much less volatile inflation at the cost of a unit root in the price level; this is consistent with the stabilization of U.S. inflation after the gold standard was abandoned.
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