Every Country for Itself and the Central Bank for Us All?

Abstract

AbstractThis paper used a small stylized nonlinear three-country macroeconomic model of a monetary union to analyse the interactions between fiscal (governments) and monetary (common central bank) policymakers. The three fiscal players were divided into a financially stable core and a less stable periphery. The periphery itself consisted of two players with different perceptions of the trade-off between fiscal stability and output growth. Using the OPTGAME algorithm, solutions were calculated for two game strategies: one cooperative (Pareto optimal) and one non-cooperative game type (the Nash game for the feedback information pattern). Introducing a negative demand shock, the performance of different coalition options between players were analysed. A higher level of cooperation leads in general to a better overall outcome of the game, however, with highly varying burdens to be borne by the players.