In this paper I test two models of strategic debt behavior. The general idea is that if a government anticipates the … possibility of defeat in the next election it will try to use the debt strategically in order to influence the policy of its … successor. Previous empirical studies have either rejected the strategic explanation of debt or have not been able to isolate …

In this paper I test two models of strategic debt behavior. The general idea is that if a government anticipates the … possibility of defeat in the next election it will try to use the debt strategically in order to influence the policy of its … successor. Previous empirical studies have either rejected the strategic explanation of debt or have not been able to isolate …

debt levels can be reached despite changes of executive power between parties. We study these questions in the context of … the German debt brake, which became a constitutional provision in 2009 but is binding for the sub-national states from …

debt levels can be reached despite changes of executive power between parties. We study these questions in the context of … the German debt brake, which became a constitutional provision in 2009 but is binding for the sub-national states from …

, but re-installed by the Allies after World War II. We find that pre-Nazi patterns in public debt re-appear in cities with … a re-installed mayor, albeit all city debt defaulted after the war. We do not find such correlations in a matched sample … of cities where the Weimar mayor did not return to office. Historical public debt does also not predict debt today in …