货币联盟中的财政铸币税与价格水平决定

Fiscal seigniorage and price leveldetermination in a currency unionSebastian Schmidt Disclaimer:This paper should not be reported as representing the views of the European Central Bank(ECB). The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the ECB. Abstract I study price level determination in a currency union when some member countries’ govern-ment securities earn a convenience yield. These ”convenience assets” generate fiscal seignioragerevenues that, given appropriate fiscal and monetary policies, back the union’s price level, much Keywords:currency union, fiscal theory of the price level, convenience yield, cross-country Non-technical summary Investors value the government securities of countries like the United States and Germany not onlyfor their pecuniary returns, but also for their liquidity and safety.As a result, investors accept This paper explores the role of fiscal seigniorage revenues, arising from convenience yields, forprice level determination in a currency union.My analysis is in the spirit of the fiscal theory of In a currency union like the euro area, with a common central bank and multiple nationalfiscal authorities, the convenience properties of government securities are likely to differ across The model economy consists of two countries forming a currency union. Each country is inhab-ited by a representative infinitely-lived household, a fiscal authority, and a national central bank.Together, the two national central banks form the union’s common central bank. Households derive In equilibrium, the real value of total public sector liabilities in the union equals the presentdiscounted value of the sum of primary surpluses, monetary seigniorage, and fiscal seigniorage. the price level is uniquely determined. The presence of government bonds with a convenience yield also has implications for equilibriumallocations.In an otherwise symmetric currency union, the fact that member countries differin terms of the convenience properties of their government bonds may lead to an asymmetric Exogenous changes in households’ demand for convenience assets move the price level by in-creasing or reducing the amount of real resources that back it. They also lead to a redistribution ofwealth across countries. An exogenous and symmetric drop in the demand for convenience assetsreduces the convenience yield.The present value of total seigniorage revenues declines, putting 1Introduction Investors value the government securities of countries like the United States and Germany notonly for their pecuniary returns, but also for their liquidity and safety (e.g., Krishnamurthy andVissing-Jorgensen, 2012; Reis, 2022; Jiang et al., 2025). As a result, investors accept lower returns This paper explores the role of fiscal seigniorage revenues, arising from convenience yields, forprice level determination in a currency union.My analysis is in the spirit of the fiscal theory of In a currency union like the euro area, with a common central bank and multiple national fiscalauthorities, the convenience properties of government securities are likely to differ across member The model economy consists of two countries forming a currency union. Each country is inhab-ited by a representative infinitely-lived household, a fiscal authority, and a national central bank.Together, the two national central banks form the union’s common central bank. Households derive In equilibrium, the real value of total public sector liabilities in the union equals the present discounted value of the sum of primary surpluses, monetary seigniorage (arising from the conve-nience yield on central bank reserves), and fiscal seigniorage (arising from the convenience yieldon government bonds). With an appropriate set of fiscal and monetary policies in place, the fis- cal seigniorage revenues back the union price level, much like primary surpluses and monetaryseigniorage revenues do, and the price level is uniquely determined. For fiscal policy, I assume that both national authorities run constant real primary surpluses—a common benchmark specification The presence of government bonds with a convenience yield also has implications for equilibriumallocations.In an otherwise symmetric currency union, the fact that member countries differin terms of the convenience properties of their government bonds may lead to an asymmetric Exogenous changes in households’ demand for convenience assets move the price level by in-creasing or reducing the amount of real resources that back it. They also lead to a redistribution of wealth across countries. An exogenous drop in the demand for convenience assets—a symmetricpreference shock across households—reduces the convenience yield (both on central bank reservesand on convenience bonds). The present value of total seigniorage revenues declines, putting upward pressure on the price level. The decline in seigniorage revenues is not symmetric across countries.Se