We provide a comprehensive assessment of the relationship between public debt and GDP growth in the postwar advanced economies. We use the timing of changes in public debt and growth to account for endogeneity, and find little evidence of a negative relationship. Semi-parametric estimates do not indicate any threshold effects. Finally, we reconcile our results with four recent, influential pape...

This paper uses a New Keynesian framework to study the coordination of fiscal and monetary policies, in response to an inflation shock when the policymaker acts with commitment. We first show that, in the simplest New Keynesian model, fiscal policy plays no part in the optimal policy response, because of the comparative advantage which monetary policy has in the control of inflation. We the...

Estimating the effects of government debt and deficits on Treasury yields is complicated by the need to isolate the effects of fiscal policy from other influences. To abstract from the effects of the business cycle, and associated monetary policy actions, on debt, deficits, and interest rates, this paper studies the relationship between long-horizon expected government debt and deficits, measur...

This paper assesses whether the UK public finances were sustainable for the period 1919 to 2001 using a nonlinear representation of the debt to GDP ratio and thus provides a more robust test of debt sustainability. Empirical evidence supports debt sustainability. Moreover, the ESTAR representation is evidence that sustainability is the result of active debt management rather than tax-smoothing....

This paper studies how the method of government debt financing affects the macroeconomic performance of the transforming Chinese economy. The investigation is conducted within the context of an endogenous growth model that incorporates the major institutional features of the Chinese economy. Using this framework, we evaluate the effects on the growth rate of output and inflation if the Chinese ...

This paper studies optimal public debt in a dynastic model with human capital externalities that cause human capital investment (fertility) to be below (above) its socially optimal level. By reducing fertility and raising human capital investment, the optimal debt can exceed 10% of output for plausible parameterizations. r 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. JEL classification: E60; H63; O41

This paper reports the results from a laboratory experiment designed to study political distortions in the accumulation of public debt. A legislature bargains over the levels of a public good and of district specific transfers in two periods. The legislature can issue or purchase risk-free bonds in the first period and the level of public debt creates a dynamic linkage across policymaking perio...

The paper examines the interrelationship between fiscal and monetary policy in a two-country monetary union. The worst scenario occurs when an independent central bank (CB) sets the nominal interest rate and responds to rising government debt/GDP ratios by monetisation. The result is high inflation, high debt/GDP ratios and a large public sector. Government debt and inflation are contained if t...

This paper explains why public domestic debt composition in emerging economies can be risky, namely in foreign currency, with a short maturity or indexed. It analyses empirically the determinants of these risk sources separately, developing a new large dataset compiled from national sources for 33 emerging economies over 1994-2006. The paper finds that economic size, the breadth of the domestic...