Monetary-Fiscal Independence, Institutional Strength, and Trade-Offs in Government Financing

This collection of papers investigates how independently optimizing fiscal and monetary policy institutions jointly determine macroeconomic variables. The first paper develops a theoretical framework modeling strategic interactions between fiscal and monetary authorities, introducing "fiscal strength" as a tool to explain historical U.S. economic outcomes. The second paper introduces the "dilution rate of government debt" and applies it to uncover effects of dynamic debt maturity management on inflation using a structural vector autoregression (SVAR) approach. The third paper provides a fiscal accounting of COVID-era inflation, showing how large deficit-financed government spending during the pandemic, with minimal discussion of repayment, contributed to subsequent inflation.