Theme
Economic Recovery under Uncertainty:
The Role of Fiscal and Monetary Policy
Date
Venue
During and post-COVID-19, central banks across the globe lowered interest rates to stimulate consumption and spur production and hence economic growth. Central governments, on the other hand, splurged large amounts of cash to support households adversely affected by the pandemic. However, in the post-COVID-19 period, central banks immediately tightened monetary policy to deal with inflation, which ensued shortly after the COVID-19 pandemic. At the same time, output growth and employment stagnated. This is despite the increased government spending and debt levels. Subsequently, observers have questioned the effectiveness as well as the role of fiscal policy and monetary policy, consequently leading to a burgeoning strand of the literature examining the coordination of fiscal and monetary policy
and the role each of the two plays in economic recovery.
Recently, the levels of uncertainty have heightened worldwide. This is owing to the rising global tensions, such as the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war and Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, and climate change, among other things. Against this background, important questions with profound policy implications are: What is the role of fiscal and monetary policy in a country’s economic recovery process amid a background of uncertainty from a variety of international shocks? How does uncertainty affect the ability to coordinate fiscal and monetary policy?
Therefore, this symposium aims to bring together scholars and practitioners that will be expected to present contemporary research seeking to understand:
In the literature, there is no shortage of studies investigating the efficacy of fiscal and monetary policy; and fiscal-monetary policy coordination. However, the exact relationship between the two policies and the manner and style in which they can be coordinated remains a subject of ongoing debate. For instance, some scholars (Lehmann & Taugourdeau, 2004; Omran, 2017; Palley, 2013) argue that fiscal policy has no impact on output. On the other hand, Mountford and Uhlig (2009) maintain that fiscal policy affects the economy. However, the effect depends on the state of the economy (Faria-e-Castro, 2021; Fazzari et al., 2015). Others have argued that the impact depends on the direction of government spending, i.e., an expansionary fiscal policy has a marginal effect vis-à-vis a contractionary fiscal policy. Recently, a new strand of the literature has emerged suggesting that the efficacy of government spending is contingent on the stance of monetary policy (Blanchard, 2023; Kim et al., 2023; Kuttner & Posen, 2002). It is our desire to generatemore knowledge on this debate that has motivated this symposium.
The symposium is open to various macroeconomics
tracks, including:
We invite abstracts in MS Word/editable document format (max 350 words) in English.
