Essays on Fiscal Policy

This thesis consists of three chapters. The first chapter makes use of a New-Keynesian framework to analyze the effects of introducing the public sector in a small open economy, for which a different degree of home-bias for the private and the public sector will be assumed. Once it has been proven that this introduction does not fundamentally vary the original results of the Galí-Monacellli (2005) model, a sensitivity analysis of the effects of such introduction will be made in a setting with different exchange-rate regimes and different degrees of openness. The second chapter develops a DSGE model which features incomplete asset markets, domestic debt denominated either in domestic or foreign currency, a risk premium on such debt and simple feedback rules. We find that in this setting a positive government spending shock leads to expansionary effects on output when exchange rates are allowed to adjust. This effect is reinforced by the real depreciation caused by such policy especially in the case in which debt is denominated in foreign currency. This is not the case under fixed exchange rates, then also under a peg effects are, as expected, quite similar under both currency denominations of debt. The third chapter was written together with Stefan Niemann and Paul Pichler. In it fiscal policy is introduced into a sovereign debt model with endogenous default costs to examine the implications for the determination of the output costs of default. We find that the quantitative properties of the output costs of default, and their dependence on primitives such as the elasticity of labor supply, are distinctly different depending on the margin of fiscal adjustment. The consideration of fiscal policy thus has potentially important implications for the quantitative properties of models of sovereign debt and default.