Effective Demand Failures and the Limits of Monetary Stabilization Policy

The challenge for stabilization policy presented by the COVID-19 pandemic stems above all from disruption of the circular flow of payments, resulting in a failure of what Keynes (1936) calls “effective demand.” As a consequence, economic activity in many sectors can be inefficiently low, and interest-rate policy cannot eliminate the distortions — not because of a limit on the extent to which interest rates can be reduced, but because interest-rate reductions fail to stimulate demand of the right sorts. Fiscal transfers are instead well-suited to addressing the fundamental problem, and can under certain circumstances achieve a first-best allocation of resources.