This paper studies the effect of public pension obligations on a sovereign government's commitment to repaying debt. In the model, the government can renege on its pension promises but suffers a cost from losing the trust of households about future pensions. Large pension promises act as a...

Key studies have identified the need to study the role of sovereign debt on economic growth, particularly in relation to countries with heavily oil based status economies. This paper applies a panel vector autoregressive approach to examine the impact of sovereign debt on economic prosperity in...

The debate over legal requirements of a balanced federal budget has gained new life. A requirement would have strong implications for future fiscal policy. Done right, a requirement will allow Congress to combine a balanced budget with policy goals such as growth and full employment. Done wrong,...

Financial intermediaries issue the majority of liquid securities, and nonfinancial firms have become net savers, holding intermediaries' debt as cash. This paper shows that intermediaries' liquidity creation stimulates growth -- firms hold their debt for unhedgeable investment needs -- but also...

Episodes of debt accumulation have been a recurrent feature of the global economy over the past fifty years. Since 2010, emerging and developing economies have experienced another wave of historically large and rapid debt accumulation. Similar past debt buildups have often ended in widespread...

Money markets are fundamentally different from stock markets. Stock markets are about price discovery for the purpose of allocating risk efficiently. Money markets are about obviating the need for price discovery using over-collateralised debt to reduce the cost of lending. Yet, attempts to...

The authors analyze the effects of government spending cuts on economic activity in an environment of severe fiscal strain, as reflected by a sizeable risk premium on government debt. Specifically, they consider a 'sovereign risk channel,' through which sovereign default risk spills over to the...

This paper analyzes the redistributive channel of a money financed fiscal stimulus (MFFS). It shows that the way in which this regime is implemented is crucial to determine its redistributive effects and consequently its effectiveness. In normal times, the most effective regime is a MFFS with no...

Previous studies argue that, based on the New Keynesian framework, a fiscal stimulus financed by money creation has a strong positive effect on output under a reasonable degree of nominal price rigidities. This paper investigates the effects of implementation lag in the moneyfinanced fiscal...

We propose a theory of indebted demand, capturing the idea that large debt burdens by households and governments lower aggregate demand, and thus natural interest rates. At the core of the theory is the simple yet under-appreciated observation that borrowers and savers differ in their marginal...