This paper analyzes the growth and employment effects of dynamic fiscal policies in an overlapping generations model with endogenous growth and imperfect labour markets. With balanced-budget policies, the modelled closed economy grows at a constant rate which is the higher, the lower are the...

The fall in the U.S. public debt/GDP ratio from 106% in 1946 to 23% in 1974 is often attributed to high rates of economic growth. This paper examines the roles of three other factors: primary budget surpluses, surprise inflation, and pegged interest rates before the Fed-Treasury Accord of 1951....

The price of a safe asset reflects not only the expected discounted future cash flows but also future service flows, since retrading allows partial insurance of idiosyncratic risk in an incomplete markets setting. This lowers the issuers' interest burden and allows the government to run a...

This paper proposes a tractable framework to analyze fiscal space and the dynamics of government debt, with a possibly binding zero lower bound (ZLB) constraint. Without the ZLB, a greater primary deficit unambiguously raises debt. However, debt need not explode: When R G - φ, where φ is the...

We study equilibria in a heterogeneous-agent incomplete-market economy with nominal government debt and flexible prices. Unlike in representative agent economies, steady-state equilibria exist when the government runs persistent deficits, provided that the level of deficits is not too large. In...

Sovereign borrowing during inflation surges is a litmus test of a government's ability to withstand and navigate macroeconomic shocks. Based on transaction-level bond issuance data, we explore how sovereign financing strategies respond to inflation surges and how policy practices affect their...

We study how fiscal deficits are financed in environments with two key features: (i) nominal rigidity and (ii) a violation of Ricardian equivalence due to finite lives or liquidity constraints. In such environments, deficits contribute to their own financing via two channels: a boom in real...