A comprehensive account of how government deficits and debt drive inflation Where do inflation and deflation ultimately come from? The fiscal theory of the price level offers a simple answer: Prices adjust so that the real value of government debt equals the present value of taxes less spending. Inflation breaks out when people don’t expect the government to fully repay its debts. The fiscal theory is well suited to today’s economy: Financial innovation undermines money demand, and central banks don’t control the money supply or aggressively change interest rates, invalidating classic theories, while large debts and deficits threaten inflation and constrain monetary policy. This book presents a comprehensive account of this important theory from one of its leading developers and advocates. John Cochrane aims to make fiscal theory useful as a conceptual framework and modeling tool, and for analyzing history and policy. He merges fiscal theory with standard models in which central banks set interest rates, giving a novel account of monetary policy. He generalizes the theory to explain data and make realistic predictions. For example, inflation decreases in recessions despite deficits because discount rates fall, raising the value of debt; specifying that governments promise to partially repay debt avoids classic puzzles and allows the theory to apply at all times, not just during periods of high inflation. Cochrane offers an extensive rethinking of monetary doctrines and institutions through the eyes of fiscal theory, and analyzes the era of zero interest rates and post-pandemic inflation. Filled with research by Cochrane and others, The Fiscal Theory of the Price Level offers important new insights about fiscal and monetary policy.

We consider price level determination from the perspective of portfolio choice. Arbitrages among money balances, bonds, and investment goods determine their relative demands. Returns to real balance holdings (transactions services), the nominal interest rate, and after-tax returns to investment goods determine the relative values of nominal and real assets. Since expectations of government policies ultimately determine the expected returns to both nominal and real assets, monetary and fiscal policies jointly determine the price level. Special cases of the fiscal and monetary policies considered produce the quantity theory of money and the fiscal theory of the price level

The fiscal theory of the price level (FTPL) provides an update and revision of monetary theory to address puzzles raised by the failure of both the new Keynesian theory (commonly used by central bankers) and neoclassical monetarism (in particular, the quantity theory of money as interpreted by Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz)—puzzles such as the low inflation that followed the sustained expansionary monetary policies post-2008. We aim to summarize and explain the FTPL as developed by Eric Leeper, John Cochrane, and others. The FTPL builds on neoclassical monetarism by observing that government liabilities—bonds, notes, bills, and currency—derive their value from the assets that back these liabilities. These assets are chiefly the present value of future tax revenues, minus government spending other than that part of spending used to service the liabilities themselves. This net “profit” of the government is called the primary surplus. This primary surplus can be expressed in real terms (a quantity of goods and services, rather than a money amount). The total real value of the bonds is thus the total real value of the assets backing the bonds: the present value of all future real primary surpluses (which we shorten to PVFS, present value of future surpluses). In a very important sense, the FTPL harkens back to commodity-based theories of money, except now the “commodity” is the real value of future surpluses earned by the government. We can then solve for the price level. It is simply the nominal value of the bonds (the face value or number of bonds issued) divided by the real value of the bonds (the PVFS). If the nominal value of the bonds is held constant and the underlying asset (PVFS) becomes less valuable, prices go up. If the PVFS becomes more valuable, prices go down. We thus calculate the value of “money” (including government liabilities of all maturities) the way one would calculate the value of any security: through discounted cash flow analysis. Note that this approach is consistent with the QTM because, if money is defined in the traditional way as currency and demand deposits and we now hold the PVFS (the backing of the money) constant, then the price level is proportional to the amount of money in circulation. The FTPL is a more complete theory, however, because (1) it incorporates all government liabilities, not traditional money alone, and (2) because it is forward-looking and dynamic rather than considering only conditions in the present.

It is not common for an entire scholarly literature to be based on a fallacy, that is, 'on faulty reasoning; misleading or unsound argument'. The 'fiscal theory of the price level', recently re-developed by Woodford, Cochrane, Sims and others, is an example of a fatally flawed research programme. The source of the fallacy is an economic misspecification. The proponents of the fiscal theory of the price level do not accept the fundamental proposition that the government's intertemporal budget constraint is a constraint on the government's instruments that must be satisfied for all admissible values of the economy-wide endogenous variables. Instead they require it to be satisfied only in equilibrium. This economic misspecification has implications for the mathematical or logical properties of the equilibria supported by models purporting to demonstrate the properties of the fiscal approach. These include: overdetermined (internally inconsistent) equilibria; anomalies like the apparent ability to price things that do not exist; the need for arbitrary restrictions on the exogenous and predetermined variables in the government's budget constraint; and anomalous behaviour of the equilibrium' price sequences, including behaviour that will ultimately violate physical resource constraints. The issue is of more than academic interest. Policy conclusions could be drawn from the fiscal theory of the price level that would be harmful if they influenced the actual behaviour of the fiscal and monetary authorities. The fiscal theory of the price level implies that a government could exogenously fix its real spending, revenue and seigniorage plans, and that the general price level would adjust the real value of its contractual nominal debt obligations so as to ensure government solvency. When reality dawns, the result could be painful fiscal tightening, government default, or unplanned recourse to the inflation tax.

The fiscal theory of the price level (FTPL) has attracted much attention but disagreement remains concerning its defining characteristics. Some writers have emphasized implications regarding interest-rate pegging and determinacy of RE solutions, whereas others have stressed its capacity to generate equilibria in which price level trajectories mimic those of bonds and differ drastically from those of money supplies. We argue that the FTPL attained prominence precisely because it appeared to provide a theory whose implications differ greatly from conventional monetary analysis; accordingly we review monetarist writings to identify the primary distinctions. In addition, we review recent findings concerning learnability - and therefore plausibility - of competing RE equilibria. These indicate that when FTPL and monetarist equilibria differ, the latter are more plausible in the vast majority of cases. Under Ricardian assumptions, necessary for clear distinctions, theoretical analysis indicates that fiscal and monetary coordination is not necessary for macroeconomic stability.

The fiscal theory of the price level represents a signicant departure from the quantity theory of money, as it implies that active (non-Ricardian) scal policy provides the nominal anchor and determines the price level. In this paper we take a rst pass at integrating discussion of financial frictions and the scal theory of the price level. We first present empirical evidence in support of non-Ricardian scal policy, and then discuss the fiscal theory of the price level in a world with financial frictions. After illustrating how the financial friction inuences the price level, we provide a theoretical explanation to our empirical ndings. We also argue that the financial friction, which is related to fiscal policy, provides an additional instrument tool to the fiscal authority and an advantage over the monetary authority in choosing the equilibrium.

It is difficult to give justice to this intriguing book within the confines of a short review. Ernst Juerg Weber, History of Economics Review Coleman s book provides an impressively clear, lively, and intuitive discussion of three of the most important issues in all of monetary economics. I recommend it highly to all readers with an interest in these issues. Peter N. Ireland, Journal of Economic Literature William Coleman s book offers a highly original and insightful discussion of the state of modern monetary theory. Professor Coleman covers difficult issues with a lightness of touch that makes for a very readable discussion. It will benefit students as well as professional economists and policymakers. Kevin Dowd, University of Nottingham, UK This book explores the causes, costs and benefits of inflation. It argues that while the cause of inflation is essentially monetary, the costs and benefits of inflation lie in inflation s distortion of the economy's responses to real shocks. The book begins by securing the Quantity Theory of Money from certain critiques. The theory is defended from the fiscal theory of the price level by a refinement of the theory of money demand, and from post Keynesianism by the construction of a theory of the supply of inside money. To cope with the endogeneity of outside money, a simple and tractable neo-Wicksellian theory of inflation is advanced, which is shown to exhibit a striking homology with the Quantity Theory. The author then traces the costliness of inflation, not to any disturbance of the money market, but to the damage inflation does to the bond market s function of sharing out disturbances to consumption caused by technological shocks. The same damage, however, imparts an egalitarian dynamic to the accumulation of wealth, which will not occur without risky inflation. The Causes, Costs and Compensations of Inflation will be of great interest to policy makers, central bankers, researchers, and both post-graduate and undergraduate students in macroeconomics, money and banking.