LONG-TERM DEBT AND OPTIMAL POLICY IN THE FISCAL THEORY OF THE PRICE LEVEL

Article Abstract:

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. KEYWORDS: Fiscal theory of the price level, government debt, price level, inflation.

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CORPORATE GOVERNANCE

Article Abstract:

The paper first develops an economic analysis of the concept of shareholder value, describes its approach, and discusses some open questions. It emphasizes the relationship between pledgeable income, monitoring, and control rights using a unifying and simple framework. The paper then provides a first and preliminary analysis of the concept of the stakeholder society. It investigates whether the managerial incentives and the control structure described in the first part can be modified so as to promote the stakeholder society. It shows that the implementation of the stakeholder society strikes three rocks: dearth of pledgeable income, deadlocks in decision-making, and lack of clear mission for management. While it fares better than the stakeholder society on those three grounds, shareholder value generates biased decision-making; the paper analyzes the costs and benefits of various methods of protecting noncontrolling stakeholders: covenants, exit options, flat claims, enlarged fiduciary duty. KEYWORDS: Governance, shareholder value, stakeholder society, control rights, managerial incentives.

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UNOBSERVABLE INVESTMENT AND THE HOLD-UP PROBLEM

Article Abstract:

We study a two-person bargaining problem in which the buyer may invest and increase his valuation of the object before bargaining. We show that if all offers are made by the seller and the time between offers is small, then the buyer invests efficiently and the seller extracts all of the surplus. Hence, bargaining with frequently repeated offers remedies the hold-up problem even when the agent who makes the relation-specific investment has no bargaining power and contracting is not possible. We consider alternative formulations with uncertain gains from trade or two-sided investment. KEYWORDS: The hold-up problem, unobservable investment, bargaining, the Coase conjecture.

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