Fiscal Policy under Flexible Exchange Rates: When is Expansion Contractionary?

In this paper the behaviour functions are specified to correspond to their foundations in closed-economy macrotheory . The demand for real money balances, in terms of the expenditure basket of goods, is specified as a function of income in terms of the same basket. Imports are specified as a function of expenditures, being functionally part of expenditures. The supply of labor is specified as a function of the expenditure price. Fiscal expansion, while expansionary in the real wage model, turns out to be expansionary, neutral, or contractionary in the money wage model depending on whether the income elasticity of the demand for money is smaller than, equal to, or greater than one, also in the long run. However, if interest payments on foreign securities are not smaller relative to the trade balance, many of the effects are reversed. Output and the exchange rate overshoot their steady-state levels in both cases. [E1, F41]