This paper examines fiscal policy without commitment and the effects of conditional bailout loans. The government relies on distortionary taxation and decides between full debt repayment and costly default. It tends to overborrow due to myopia, which induces default to be a relevant policy...

A fiscal shock due to a shift in taxes or in government spending will, at some point in time, constrain the future path of taxes and spending, since the government’s intertemporal budget constraint will eventually have to be met. This simple fact is surprisingly overlooked in analyses of the...

This paper provides evidence on the behavior of public debt managers during fiscal" stabilizations in OECD countries over the last two decades. We find that debt maturity tends to" lengthen the more credible the program, the lower the long-term interest rate and the higher the" volatility of...

Under free capital mobility, confidence crises can result in devaluations even when fixed exchange rates are viable, if fiscal authorities can obtain temporary money financing. During a crisis, domestic interest rates increase reflecting the expected devaluation. Rather than selling debt at...

A shift in taxes or in government spending (a quot;fiscal shockquot;) at some point in time puts a constraint on the path of taxes and spending in the future, since the government intertemporal budget constraint will eventually have to be met. This simple fact is surprisingly overlooked in...

Blanchard (2005) suggested that active interest rate policy might induce unstable dynamics in highly-indebted economies. We examine this in a dynamic general equilibrium model where Calvo-type price rigidities provide a rationale for inflation stabilization. Unstable dynamics can occur when the...