【Macro/Finance webinar】COVID-19, Seignorage, Quantitative Easing and the Fiscal- Monetary Nexus
2021/05/28
研討會日期 : 2021-05-28
時間 : 16:00
主講人 : Professor Alexander Cukierman
地點 : online
演講者簡介 : Professor Cukierman received his Ph.D. in Economics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1972. He is currently the Professor Emeritus at Tel-Aviv University. His research fields are Macro and Monetary Economics.
演講摘要 : The huge fiscal expansions triggered by the corona crisis raised debt/GDP ratios to levels usually experienced during major wars. This led a number of economists to reconsider the taboo on using seignorage. Following a brief documentation of the economic impact of the crisis and the responses of aggregate demand policies the paper discusses the views of economists and policymaker in the past and present on seignorage. Optimal taxation considerations imply that the decision on allocating deficit financing between debt and seignorage falls within the realm of fiscal authorities – a fact that infringes on central bank (CB) autonomy. The paper explores ideas aimed at improving the tradeoff between implementation of the optimal taxation principle and CB autonomy. Implication of cross-country variations in the need to use seignorage are discussed. Comparison of the indirect contribution of quantitatve easing (QE) to deficit financing with the direct contribution of seignorage implies that QE is a substitute to seignorage that preserves central bank dominance without much change in existing monetary institutions. Empirical evidence from the US during the global financial crisis with the post WWI German inflation supports the view that for countries experiencing deflationary pressure seignorage is more potent in moving inflation toward its target than QE. Given the current outlook temporary use of seignorage where badly needed does not appear to involve a substantial risk of inflation.
