Skip to main content

Government Budget Constraint

  • Reference work entry
  • First Online:
The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics
  • 43 Accesses

Abstract

The government budget constraint is an accounting identity linking the monetary authority’s choices of money growth or nominal interest rate and the fiscal authority’s choices of spending, taxation, and borrowing at a point in time and across time. The intertemporal links create a rich set of possible outcomes from standard macro policy experiments. Taking the government budget constraint seriously can overturn some widely held beliefs about policy effects.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 6,499.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Hardcover Book
USD 8,499.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Bibliography

  • Barro, R. 1974. Are government bonds net wealth? Journal of Political Economy 82: 1095–1117.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Becker, R., and J. Boyd III. 1997. Capital theory, equilibrium analysis, and recursive utility. Malden: Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Christ, C. 1967. A short-run aggregate-demand model of the interdependence and effects of monetary and fiscal policies with Keynesian and classical interest elasticities. American Economic Review 57: 434–443.

    Google Scholar 

  • Christ, C. 1968. A simple macroeconomic model with a government budget restraint. Journal of Political Economy 76: 53–67.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cochrane, J. 1999. A frictionless view of U.S. inflation. In NBER macroeconomics annual 1998, ed. B. Bernanke and J. Rotemberg. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cochrane, J. 2001. Long-term debt and optimal policy in the fiscal theory of the price level. Econometrica 69: 69–116.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Davig, T. 2005. Periodically expanding discounted debt: A threat to fiscal policy sustainability? Journal of Applied Econometrics 20: 829–840.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Davig, T., and E. Leeper. 2005. Fluctuating macro policies and the fiscal theory. Working paper no. 11212. Cambridge, MA: NBER.

    Google Scholar 

  • Davig, T., E. Leeper, and H. Chung. 2004. Monetary and fiscal policy switching. Working paper no. 10362. Cambridge, MA: NBER.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gordon, D., and E. Leeper. 2006. The price level, the quantity theory of money, and the fiscal theory of the price level. Scottish Journal of Political Economy 53: 4–27.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hamilton, J., and M. Flavin. 1986. On the limitations of government borrowing: A framework for empirical testing. American Economic Review 76: 808–819.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hansen, L., W. Roberds, and T. Sargent. 1991. Time series implications of present value budget balance and of martingale models of consumption and taxes. In Rational expectations econometrics, ed. L. Hansen and T. Sargent. Boulder: Westview Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kamihigashi, T. 2005. Necessity of the transversality condition for stochastic models with bounded or CRRA utility. Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control 29: 1313–1329.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Leeper, E. 1991. Equilibria under ‘active’ and ‘passive’ monetary and fiscal policies. Journal of Monetary Economics 27: 129–147.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ricardo, D. 1821. On the principles of political economy and taxation. 3rd edn. London: John Murray.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sargent, T., and N. Wallace. 1981. Some unpleasant monetarist arithmetic. Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis Quarterly Review 5: 1–17.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sidrauski, M. 1967. Rational choice and patterns of growth in a monetary economy. American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings 57: 534–544.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sims, C. 1994. A simple model for study of the determination of the price level and the interaction of monetary and fiscal policy. Economic Theory 4: 381–399.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sims, C. 1998. Econometric implications of the government budget constraint. Journal of Econometrics 83: 9–19.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Taylor, J. 1999. Monetary policy rules. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Woodford, M. 1995. Price-level determinacy without control of a monetary aggregate. In Carnegie-Rochester conference series on public policy, ed. B. McCallum and C. Plosser.

    Google Scholar 

  • Woodford, M. 2001. Fiscal requirements for price stability. Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking 33: 669–728.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Authors

Editor information

Copyright information

© 2018 Macmillan Publishers Ltd.

About this entry

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this entry

Leeper, E.M., Nason, J.M. (2018). Government Budget Constraint. In: The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95189-5_2041

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics