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A bit of insomnia. Might as well do a thread on MMT.
The difficulty with this expansionary monetary theory, is that the pool of country's that can borrow in their own currencies is very small. Limited to the US, Eurozone area, Japan etc ... Emerging markets do not have this luxury, would certainly be condemned to runaway inflation.
There's been papers that have sought to open up this debate further, notably some endorsed by Harvard economist and Professor, Haussmann. The Original Sin Hypothesis explains the situation where a domestic currency cannot be used to borrow abroad or even long-term domestically.
The first leg of this paper by Prof. Haussmann and colleagues, found that the original sin (or the inability to borrow in own currency abroad and domestically) was present and independent of histories of high inflation and currency depreciations.
Alas, I'll digress on the OS topic. For further reading and a simplified version of it, peep this link. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_sin_(economics)
MMT builds on Abba Lerner's theory of Functional Finance and argues that country's with the authority to issue their own currency can never run out money in the same way in which private businesses can.
The theory usually favours the printing of money, the needed amounts in order to fund projects with long-term benefits, such as public infrastructure projects and income guarantee schemes in times of downturn in the economy. Not quite the same with QE.
Proponents of MMT cite Japan as the example of where its application has been successful, where the previous Prime Minister Shinzo Abe employed this expansionary monetary policy and the Bank of Japan ran large deficits for the government.
The difference in the Japanese case is that, even with the large debt-to-GDP of almost 240% (cited by the Japanese Ministry of Finance), the net debt-to-GDP ratio is at healthy levels considering that public firms had accumulated large real and financial assets during Abenomics.
In fact, the IMF's Fiscal Monitor Report of October 2018 "Managing Public Wealth" places Japan as one of the top country's with a net debt-to-GDP ratio in the developing world. Better than most if not all Eurozone economies and almost on par with the United States.
The situation with most emerging market economies is a bit difficult. Our debt to GDP ratios are amongst one of the worst in the world and even worst, we do not have much real assets accumulated to offset and balance. Running deficits become that much harder.
