The paper investigates the sources of debt and debt difficulties for a group of Latin American countries. It is argued that external shocks -- oil, interest rates, world recession and the fall in real commodity prices -- cannot account by themselves for the problems. Budget deficits that...

Why did the country that borrowed the most industrialize first? Earlier research has viewed the explosion of debt in 18th century Britain as either detrimental, or as neutral for economic growth. In this paper, we argue instead that Britain's borrowing boom was beneficial. The massive issuance...

What determines the sustainability of sovereign debt? We develop a model where myopic governments seek popularity but can nevertheless commit credibly to service external debt. They do not default when debt is low because they would lose access to debt markets and be forced to reduce spending;...

We study optimal fiscal and redistributive policies in an open economy without commitment. Due to its redistributive motives, the government's incentive to default on its external debt is affected by inequality. We show that in equilibrium the economy endogenously fluctuates between two regimes....

Many issues in macroeconomics, such as the level of the steady state interest rate, or the dynamic effects of government deficit finance, depend crucially on the horizon of economic agents. This paper develops a simple analytical model in which such issues can be examined and in which the...

This paper takes a step toward providing a general equilibrium framework within which to study the nub of the current fiscal debate around the world: what are the tradeoffs between short-run stabilization and long-run sustainability when the perceived riskiness of government debt depends, in...

This paper presents and applies an integrated framework to assess the consistency between fiscal deficits and other macroeconomic targets, such as output growth and the rate of inflation. The model centers around the government budget constraint and can be used to either derive the financeable...

This note comments on two central issues for fiscal policy design in the UK, highlighted in the recent Code for Fiscal Stability' proposed by the new Labour government. The first concerns the merits of the so-called golden rule of public sector investment' -- the proposition that, over the...

This paper documents a long-standing stability in the relationship between outstanding debt and economic activity in the United States, and explores the implications for capital formation of several hypotheses that could explain this observed phenomenon. The aggregate of outstanding credit...

In 1841 and 1842, eight states and the Territory of Florida defaulted on their sovereign debts. Traditional histories of the default crisis have stressed the causal role of the depression that began with the Panic of 1837, unexpected revenue shortfalls from canal and bank investments as a result...