“Fiscal and Monetary Policies,” Bern, Spring 2015

MA course at the University of Bern.

The classes follow section 5 in these notes and build on the material covered in section 2. Uni Bern’s official course page.

Update (April 22, 2015)—Main contents of lectures:

  1. Concepts. RA model with government spending and taxes.
  2. RA model: Equilibrium with lump sum or distorting taxes.
  3. Government debt in RA model.
  4. Government debt and social security in OLG model.
  5. Consolidated government budget constraint [2 lectures].
  6. Neutrality results in CIA model.
  7. Game of chicken. FTPL. Active and passive policies.
  8. Tax smoothing (Barro 1979).
  9. Tax smoothing (Lucas and Stokey 1983) [2 lectures].
  10. Time consistent tax policy (Lucas and Stokey 1983).
  11. Time consistent debt policy: Sovereign debt.
  12. Time consistent monetary policy (Barro and Gordon 1983) [time permitting].