Alexandru MINEA

An important literature shows that inflation targeting (IT) adoption improves fiscal discipline. Our impact assessment analysis performed in a large sample of 89 developing countries over three decades shows that this favorable impact covers a composition effect: IT adoption is found to reduce more current expenditure compared with public investment in IT countries relative to non-IT countries. This finding is robust to various alternative specification, related to the structure of the sample, the measurement of the IT regime, or the estimation method. Consequently, aside from its acknowledged benefits for monetary policy goals, IT appears as an efficient tool to strengthen fiscal policy in developing countries towards lower and more productive public expenditure.

This paper investigates the relationship between public debt and environmental debt—reflecting CO carbon concentration. First, using an endogenous growth model in which pollution abatement spending can be financed by public debt, we show that public debt and environmental debt are complementary in the long run and usually substitutes in the short run. Second, these predictions are empirically confirmed: in particular, a 1% increase in the public debt ratio leads to an increase of 0.74% in cumulative CO per capita in the long run. Our findings emphasize the difficulty of defining policies that jointly serve both the economic (fiscal) and the environmental goals, due to the short- and long-run conflicting environmental effects of policies that either reduce or do not constrain public debt.

Empirical studies emphasise that higher financial development (FD) amplifies the output cost of banking crises. However, no study has so far investigated the effect of FD on another key dimension of banking crises, namely their duration. Using a large sample of banking crises over the 1977-2014 period, we find that higher FD is associated with a significant increase in the duration of banking crises (DBC). This result is robust to a broad range of alternative specifications and is unaffected by unobserved heterogeneity or endogeneity. Finally, we show that the effect of FD on DBC is subject to nonlinearities and varies across decades and with the level of economic development.

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This paper develops an original analysis of deficit monetization in a growth model with transaction costs, in which economic growth interacts with productive public expenditures. This interaction generates two positive balanced growth paths (BGP) in the long run: a high BGP and a low BGP. The transitional dynamics show that multiplicity cannot be rejected if transaction costs affect both consumption and investment expenditures, with possible indeterminacy of the high BGP. Importantly, deficit monetization is shown to reduce the parameter space producing indeterminacy.

Most of countries covered by natural forests are developing countries, with limited ability to levy taxes and restrained access to international credit markets. Consequently, they are amenable to draw heavily on two sources of government financing, namely seigniorage and deforestation revenues. First, we develop a theoretical model emphasizing a substitution effect between seigniorage and deforestation revenues. Second, a panel-data econometric analysis over the 1990–2010 period confirms our findings. Consequently, a tighter monetary policy hastens deforestation. Third, we extend the theoretical model and show that international transfers dedicated to forest protection can upturn the positive link between tighter monetary policies and deforestation, and then discuss the relevance of this finding with respect to recent institutional arrangements.

Les récentes élections européennes qui se sont déroulées dans un climat pessimiste et les graves tensions manifestées dans le voisinage esteuropéen, soulèvent la question du devenir des pays d’Europe centrale et orientale (PECO). Ces économies en ont-elles terminé de leur transition économique ? L’intégration à l’Union européenne (UE) est-elle (toujours) un mirage ? Avant d’essayer de répondre à ces questions, il nous semble pertinent de proposer un tour d’horizon de la conjoncture macro-économique dans ces pays. Il ressort assez rapidement de ce panorama qu’au-delà des cycles conjoncturels, beaucoup de ces économies sont confrontées à de réelles difficultés structurelles, qu’il s’agisse de leur capacité à générer de la croissance, ou encore de leur faculté à réorganiser leur système financier. L’intégration à l’Union européenne a pu servir d’ancrage pour les réformes nécessaires et en même temps pour connecter ces nouvelles économies de marché à une zone, certes riche, mais engluée dans une croissance molle. Quelles sont les perspectives pour les pays intégrés depuis 2004, ou plus récemment et plus encore, pour ceux qui souhaiteraient l’être dans le futur ?

The endogenous growth literature established the existence of an inverted-U curve between taxes and economic growth, namely a Growth Laffer Curve, but empirical evidence on this relationship in developing countries is rather limited. Given that seigniorage and public debt are also important means of financing public spending in these countries, we take into account in this paper their respective impacts on growth, as they might deform the existing relationship between taxes and growth. To this end, we develop a growth model with public investment as the engine of perpetual growth, and look for the effect of debt, tax and money financing on economic growth. We study in particular the way fiscal and monetary policies deform the Growth Laffer Curve in developing countries. An empirical section based on a panel of 100 developing countries over the period 1980–2010 provides both OLS-Fixed Effects and GMM-system estimations that support our theoretical conclusions, namely the existence of Growth Laffer Curves indexed by the levels of debt and of seigniorage.

In a very interesting endogenous growth model, Futagami, Iwaisako, and Ohdoi [Macroeconomic Dynamics 12 (2008), 445-462] study the long-run growth effect of borrowing for public investment. Their model exhibits (i) the ltiplicity of balanced growth paths (BGPs) in the long run (two steady states) and (ii) a possible indeterminacy of the transition path to the high-growth BGP. The goal of this note is to show that their results depend on a sharp assumption, namely the definition of the public debt target as a ratio to private capital. If the target is defined in terms of public debt-to-GDP ratio, both results vanish: the model exhibits a unique BGP (no multiplicity) and the adjustment path to this unique equilibrium is determinate (no indeterminacy).

We present an evaluation of the main empirical approaches used in the literature to estimate the contribution of public capital stock to growth and private factors' productivity. Based on a simple stochastic general equilibrium model, built as to reproduce the main long-run relations observed in US post-war historical data, we show that the production function approach may not be reliable to estimate this contribution. Our analysis reveals that this approach largely overestimates the public capital elasticity, given the presence of a common stochastic trend shared by all non-stationary inputs.

Starting July the 1st 1997, Bulgaria adopted a Currency Board (CB) monetary system. This paper aims at investigating if the adoption of the CB monetary system, which involves the cost of losing monetary autonomy, has provided a relatively better (with respect to other CEEC) monetary integration of Bulgaria with the European Monetary Union (EMU). Since Bulgarian monetary variables are endogenous under a CB, we focus on the ECB and FED interest rates as the main sources on monetary volatility. First, we find that ECB shocks are more rapidly absorbed and have less significant impact of domestic variables, with respect to other external monetary shocks (FED rate changes). Second, the responses of Bulgarian variables following changes in the ECB interest rate present lower persistence and significance, with respect to what the previous literature emphasized for other CEEC with monetary autonomy. This latter result still holds when accounting for different sources of cross-country heterogeneity outlined in the literature, thus supporting that the adoption of the CB may have worked as a rather good device in terms of integration of Bulgaria into the EMU.

Dans cet article, nous nous intéressons aux effets des déficits publics sur la croissance, dans un modèle de croissance endogène avec investissement public pouvant être financé par impôt ou dette publique. Nous nous focalisons sur la croissance de long terme et étudions la manière dont des déficits persistants influencent la croissance. Nous montrons que ces déficits réduisent toujours la croissance à long terme, indépendamment des règles budgétaires adoptées par le gouvernement.

Dans les analyses empiriques, la " qualité institutionnelle " semble être une variable déterminante pour établir le sens de la relation entre finance et croissance. Ainsi, Demetriades & Law (2004) montrent que le développement financier exerce un effet favorable sur la croissance lorsque les institutions sont saines, alors que cette corrélation disparaît si les institutions sont altérées. Dans cet article, nous tentons de reproduire ce fait saillant dans un modèle de croissance endogène. Dans notre modèle, lorsque la qualité institutionnelle dépasse un certain seuil, la relation entre finance et croissance est positive, alors qu'en deçà du seuil, elle devient négative. Ce résultat s'explique de la manière suivante : le développement financier abaisse les coûts de transaction sur l'investissement privé, mais réduit également les recettes de seigneuriage utilisables pour les investissements publics. Par conséquent, il est favorable à la croissance seulement si d'autres recettes publiques peuvent être utilisées pour financer les investissements publics, donc si la qualité institutionnelle est suffisante pour permettre de collecter des impôts autrement que par taxe inflationniste. Au contraire, si la qualité institutionnelle est trop faible, la perte de recettes de seigneuriage ne peut être compensée par la collecte de nouveaux impôts, et les infrastructures nécessaires au développement ne peuvent être programmées.

This paper studies monetary and fiscal policies in an endogenous growth model with transaction costs. We show that the relation between long-run economic growth and both monetary and fiscal policies is subject to threshold effects, a result that gives account of a number of recent empirical findings. Furthermore, the model shows that, to finance public expenditures, growth-maximizing governments must choose relatively high seigniorage (respectively income taxation), if “institutional quality” and “financial development” indicators are low (respectively high). Thus, our model may explain why some governments resort to seigniorage and inflationary finance, and others rather resort to high tax rates, as a result of growthmaximizing strategies in different structural environments (notably concerning institutional and financial development contexts). In addition, the model allows examining how the optimal mix of government finance changes in response to different public debt contexts. A short empirical section confirms our theoretical results.

Nous proposons un modèle théorique simple permettant de prendre en compte l'existence de régimes d'endettement de long terme, en accord avec les faits saillants observés en longue période. Nous nous intéressons particulièrement aux effets d'une hausse permanente de la dette publique sur la croissance à long terme, et nous montrons que ces effets, toujours négatifs (on nuls), dépendent dans leur ampleur de la variable d'ajustement à la charge de la dette dans la contrainte budgétaire de l'Etat. Enfin, nous montrons qu'au contraire des effets sur la croissance, les effets sur le bien-être à long terme d'une hausse permanente de la dette publique peuvent être positifs. Nous en déduisons l'existence d'un seuil optimal pour le ratio de dette publique au PIB.

We correct an error in [Greiner, A., Semmler, W., 2000. Endogenous growth, government debt and budgetary regimes. Journal of Macroeconomics 22, 363-384] concerning the effect of different debt rules on long term economic growth. We focus on Proposition1 stating that, in some cases, using deficits to finance productive public expenditures, may raise long term economic growth. We propose an analytical proof, showing that the cases in which deficits raise the balanced growth path imply Ponzi games and are, therefore, infeasible. Consequently, using deficits to finance public investment is always detrimental to economic growth in the long-run in their model.

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Depuis le modèle de Barro (1990), la littérature théorique met en évidence l'existence d'une relation en cloche entre impôt et croissance économique, dans l'esprit de la « courbe de Laffer ». Cependant, les évidences empiriques semblent réfuter une telle relation. Nous montrons que ce hiatus disparaît lorsque l'on prend en compte l'effet des déficits publics. En effet, l?indexation de la relation impôt-croissance par le ratio de déficit public permet de réconcilier les données avec les travaux théoriques mettant en évidence une « courbe de Laffer de croissance »

Dans cet article, nous proposons un modèle théorique simple dans lequel l'impact du déficit budgétaire sur les dépenses publiques d'investissement dépend du niveau de dette publique (en pourcentage du PIB). Lorsque la dette publique est faible, l'impact du déficit est positif, car la charge de la dette peut être absorbée par une diminution des dépenses de consommation. Lorsque la dette est très élevée, en revanche, il n'est plus possible de réduire les dépenses de consommation, et l'ajustement s'opère par les dépenses d'investissement, de sorte que la relation entre déficit et dépenses publiques d'investissement devient négative. Une analyse empirique menée dans un modèle économétrique avec effets de seuil en panel sur 22 pays de l'OCDE vient confirmer cette non linéarité.

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This paper develops a limit-cycle-based theory of debt fluctuations through a simple endogenous growth model. Public debt and deficit are introduced by relaxing the balanced-budget rule hypothesis, and assuming a simple fiscal rule. Our main result is that fiscal rules can be destabilizing, leading to (i) multiple equilibria-four balanced-growth paths can emerge-, (ii) endogenous public debt cycles, which appear both in the short and the long run, and (iii) hysteresis phenomena arising from extreme sensitivity of changes in parameters. We also reveal that a balanced-budget rule does not preclude large aggregate fluctuations. Finally, our calibration exercise highlights that our model produces asymmetric cycles consistent with observed stylized facts.

In a seminal contribution, Guo and Harrison (2004, JET) showed that, under a balanced-budget rule, the neoclassical growth model exhibits saddle-path stability when the adjustment is based on wasteful public spending. The present paper challenges this result in an endogenous growth framework with non-trivial dynamics of the debt-to-GDP ratio. We show that the emergence of aggregate instability dramatically depends on the strength of social labor externalities. If the labor demand is positively sloped and steeper than the labor supply, two reachable balanced-growth paths appear-a no growth trap, and a positive growth solution-that gives birth to both local and global indeterminacy, hence aggregate instability driven by self-fulfilling beliefs (sunspots). In addition, we show that a fiscal rule such that the tax rate strongly responds to public-debt increases can remove the no-growth trap, and secure positive long-run growth. JEL classification: E62; O41

In a seminal contribution, Schmitt-Grohé and Uribe (JPE, 1997), showed that the balanced-budget rule (BBR) produces aggregate instability in an exogenous growth model with labor tax-based adjustment. The present paper challenges this result in an endogenous growth framework with a more general budget rule, involving deficit and debt in the long-run and making the BBR a special case. We show that the emergence of aggregate instability dramatically depends on the level of public spending. In particular, low public spending ensures determinacy. However, in the case of high public spending, multiplicity arises, with four potential equilibria: two high-growth BGPs, a low-growth trap, and a "catastrophic" equilibrium where the economy asymptotically collapses. In addition, when the ratio of public spending is sufficiently large, a subcritical Hopf bifurcation appears around the low-growth trap, giving rise to a homoclinic orbit going around the neighborhood of the catastrophic equilibrium. A calibration exercise confirms that these results are obtained for realistic values of parameters.

The article explores the relationship between public debt and environmental debt. The latter is defined as the difference between the "virgin state" which is the maximum stock of environmental quality that can be kept intact with natural regenerations and the current quality of the environment. A theoretical model of endogenous growth is built. We show that there is a unique well-determined balanced-growth path. The public debt and the environmental debt are substitute in the short-run but complementary in the long-run. Indeed, budget deficit provides additional resources to finance pollution abatement spending, but generate also unproductive expenditures (the debt burden). This hypothesis is tested on a sample of 22 countries for the period 1990-2011. The environmental debt is measured by the cumulative CO2 emissions per capita. We use panel time-series estimators which allow for heterogeneity in the slope coefficients between countries. It appears mainly that, in the long term, an increase of 100% in public debt ratio leads to an increase of 74% in cumulative CO2 per capita. In addition, this positive long-run relationship is still present at the country and the sub-sample level, despite some differences in the short-term dynamics.

The present paper develops a simple theoretical setup to examine the role of the tax-spending mix of fiscal adjustments on aggregate (in)stability in indebted economies. To this end, we build an AK endogenous growth model with public debt dynamics. If the adjustment of the government's budget constraint is based on a single instrument (taxes or public spending), the economy converges towards a high-growth path. With mixed adjustment, however, another equilibrium appears (the no-growth path) that can be locally over-determine (unstable) or under-determined (stable). A hopf bifurcation can occurs at the border between the last two cases, which leads to cyclical dynamics. We also show that global indeterminacy is likely to emerge if fiscal adjustment is mainly based on public spending. A calibration of the model shows that area of indeterminacy covers reasonable values for parameters.

In response to the Great Recession, Central Banks around the world adopted " unconven-tional " monetary policies. In particular, the Fed, and more recently the ECB, launched massive debt monetization programs. In this paper, we develop a formal analysis of the short-and long-run consequences of deficit and debt monetization, through an endoge-nous growth model in which economic growth interacts with productive public expenditure. This interaction can generate two positive balanced growth paths (BGP) in the long-run: a high BGP and a low BGP, and further, depending on the form of the CIA constraint, possible multiplicity and indeterminacy. Thus, monetizing deficits is found to be remarkably powerful. First, a large dose of monetization might allow avoiding, whenever present, BGP indeterminacy. Second, monetization always allows increasing growth and welfare along the (high) BGP, by weakening the debt burden in the long-run. Third, with a CIA on consumption only, monetization provides a rationale for deficits in the long-run: for high degrees of monetization, the impact of deficits and debts on economic growth and welfare becomes positive in the steady-state.

In response to the Great Recession, Central Banks around the world adopted " unconven-tional " monetary policies. In particular, the Fed, and more recently the ECB, launched massive debt monetization programs. In this paper, we develop a formal analysis of the short-and long-run consequences of deficit and debt monetization, through an endoge-nous growth model in which economic growth interacts with productive public expenditure. This interaction can generate two positive balanced growth paths (BGP) in the long-run: a high BGP and a low BGP, and further, depending on the form of the CIA constraint, possible multiplicity and indeterminacy. Thus, monetizing deficits is found to be remarkably powerful. First, a large dose of monetization might allow avoiding, whenever present, BGP indeterminacy. Second, monetization always allows increasing growth and welfare along the (high) BGP, by weakening the debt burden in the long-run. Third, with a CIA on consumption only, monetization provides a rationale for deficits in the long-run: for high degrees of monetization, the impact of deficits and debts on economic growth and welfare becomes positive in the steady-state.

Most of countries covered by natural forests are developing countries, with limited ability to levy taxes and restrained access to international credit markets; consequently, they are amenable to draw heavily on two sources of government financing, namely seigniorage and deforestation revenues. First, we develop a theoretical model emphasizing a substitution effect between seigniorage and deforestation revenues. Second, a panel-data econometric analysis over the 1990-2010 period confirms our findings. Consequently, a tighter monetary policy hastens deforestation. Third, we extend the theoretical model and show that international transfers dedicated to forest protection can upturn the positive link between tighter monetary policies and deforestation, and then discuss the relevance of this finding with respect to recent institutional arrangements.

We present an evaluation of the main empirical approaches used in the literature to estimate the contribution of public capital stock to growth and private factors' productivity. Based on a simple stochastic general equilibrium model, built as to reproduce the main long-run relations observed in US post-war historical data, we show that the production function approach may not be reliable to estimate this contribution. Our analysis reveals that this approach largely overestimates the public capital elasticity, given the presence of a common stochastic trend shared by all non-stationary inputs.

Nous proposons un modèle théorique simple permettant de prendre en compte l'existence de régimes d'endettement de long terme, en accord avec les faits saillants observés en longue période. Nous nous intéressons particulièrement aux effets d'une hausse permanente de la dette publique sur la croissance à long terme, et nous montrons que ces effets, toujours négatifs (on nuls), dépendent dans leur ampleur de la variable d'ajustement à la charge de la dette dans la contrainte budgétaire de l'Etat. Enfin, nous montrons qu'au contraire des effets sur la croissance, les effets sur le bien-être à long terme d'une hausse permanente de la dette publique peuvent être positifs. Nous en déduisons l'existence d'un seuil optimal pour le ratio de dette publique au PIB.

The endogenous growth literature has established the existence of an inverted-U curve between taxes and economic growth, namely a Growth Laffer Curve (GLC). We develop a growth model with public investment as the engine of perpetual growth, and look for the effect of deficit, tax and money financing on economic growth. We study in particular the way fiscal and monetary policies (through deficit and seigniorage respectively) deform the GLC. An empirical section based on a panel of developing countries provides GMM-system estimators that support our theoretical conclusions.

The forest still covers an important share of land area in many developing countries and represents an important source of revenue for governments. Another major contribution to government revenues comes from printing money, namely the seigniorage. Building on a simple theoretical model where governments target inflation and aim at reducing deforestation while minimising a welfare loss function, we exhibit the potential substitution effect between seigniorage and deforestation revenues. Regressions run on a panel of developing countries show that there exists a non-negligible substitution effect between seigniorage and deforestation revenues, which is, as suggested by the theoretical model, even stronger if the endogenous character of seigniorage is taken into account. Adding variables suggested by the theoretical model as well as usual control variables in deforestation equations, do not alter the main result. As a consequence, disinflation policies as recommended by the IMF, may hasten deforestation. The model is extended to address this problem, which shows that international transfers dedicated to rainforest protection may upturn the positive correlation between tighter monetary policies and deforestation and give some additional support to REDD's advocates.

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In this paper, we study maximizing long-run economic growth trade-off in monetary and fiscal policies in an endogenous growth model with transaction costs. We show that both monetary and fiscal policies are subject to threshold effects, a result that gives account of a number of recent empirical findings. Furthermore, the model shows that, to finance public expenditures, maximizing-growth government must choose relatively high seigniorage (respectively income taxation), if "tax evasion" and "financial repression" coefficients are high (respectively low). Thus, our model may explain why some governments resort to seigniorage and inflationary finance, and others rather resort to high tax-rate, as result of maximizing-growth strategies in different structural enviroments (notably concerning tax evasion and financial repression). In addition, the model allows examining how the optimal mix of government finance changes in response to different public debt contexts.

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