Credibility of Macroeconomic Policy : An Introduction and a Broad Survey

Abstract

This is a broad survey of the work on credibility of macroeconomic policy since the early 80's. I critically evaluate a first generation of work dealing with the basic credibility problem that arises when policy cannot be precommited and when a desireable policy fails to be ex post optimal. Then, the desireable policy is not credible to the private sector. The work I discuss, deals with credibility problems in three different areas of macroeconomics (i) "anti-inflationary monetary policy", (ii) "macroeconomic public finance", and (iii) "policy coordination". The first generation of work leaves several issues unresolved, however, and a second generation of work dealing with these unresolved issues is currently developing. I also discuss this very recent work and make some suggestions for future research.

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