A tax-smoothing objective is used to assess the optimal composition of public debt with respect to maturity and contingencies. This objective motivates the government to make its debt payouts contingent on the levels of public outlay and the tax base. If these contingencies are present, but asset prices of non-contingent indexed debt are stochastic, then full tax smoothing dictates an optimal m...

This paper constructs a dynamic model of government borrowing and default. The government faces a fiscal constraint in that it cannot raise tax rates. By defaulting on the debt, the government can increase domestic consumption. Two types of default arise in this environment: fiscal defaults and aggregate defaults. Fiscal defaults occur because the government cannot service the debt due to its i...

We consider optimal government debt maturity in a deterministic economy in which the government can issue any arbitrary maturity structure and in which bond prices are a function of the government’s current primary surplus and the path of future primary surpluses. The government sequentially chooses policy, taking into account how the current primary surplus and the structure of maturity issuan...

In this paper, we attempt to provide theoretical investigation to debt roll-over crisis in government bond market. By using the global game techniques, we analyse coordination problem in debt auction. The approach in this paper allows us to have insight on the relation between occurrence of sovereign debt roll-over crisis and the fundamentals of economy which is not clearly explained in precedi...

The relationship between government debt, exports and economic growth has been the focus of a considerable number of academic studies in recent years. The economic crisis, which started in the United States mortgage market, quickly went global when mortgage-backed securities traded by financial institutions. Europe’s response was immediate regarding the measures to tackle the crisis. The establ...

Substantial amounts of debt relief have been granted to a set of low-income countries, as an alternative aid modality. Although the theoretical case for debt relief is firmly established, only empirical analysis can show whether debt relief is indeed a (more) effective mode of aid delivery. We investigate the linkages between debt relief and other fiscal variables such as current expenditure, g...

This paper considers optimal fiscal policy in a deterministic Lucas and Stokey (1983) economy in the absence of government commitment. In every period, the government chooses a labor income tax and issues any unconstrained maturity structure of debt as a function of its outstanding debt portfolio. We find that the solution under commitment cannot always be sustained through the appropriate choi...

This paper characterizes tax and debt dynamics in Ramsey plans for incomplete markets economies that generalize an Aiyagari et al. (2002) economy by allowing a single asset traded by the government to be risky. Long run debt and tax dynamics can be attracted not only to the first-best continuation allocations discovered by Aiyagari et al. for quasi-linear preferences, but instead to a continuat...

This paper develops a small New Keynesian model with capital accumulation and government debt dynamics. The paper discusses the design of simple monetary and fiscal policy rules consistent with determinate equilibrium dynamics in the absence of Ricardian equivalence. Under this assumption, government debt turns into a relevant state variable which needs to be accounted for in the analysis of eq...