In this paper, we present data on trends over time in government debt financing in Japan since 2010 with emphasis on the importance of foreign holders and speculate about the determinants of those trends. We find that Japanese government securities were held primarily by domestic holders until...

The worst global downturn since the Great Depression has caused ballooning budget deficits in most nations, as tax revenues collapse and governments bail out financial institutions and attempt countercyclical fiscal policy. With notable exceptions, most economists accept the desirability of...

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...

Societies often rely on simple rules to restrict the size and behavior of governments. When fiscal and monetary policies are conducted by a discretionary and profligate government, I find that revenue ceilings vastly outperform debt, deficit and monetary rules, both in effectiveness at curbing...

In times of fiscal stress monetary policy impacts the probability of sovereign default alongside inflation dynamics. (Uribe, 2006) studies monetary policy that conducts inflation targeting controlling the risky interest rate; he concludes that in the presence of fiscal stress low inflation can...

Household-specific growth rates of the tax base imply that the timing of tax collections determines the distribution of tax burdens and wealth across households. Changes in fiscal policy do not only shift tax burdens across generations, but also within cohorts. Institutional deficit constraints...

Household-specific growth rates of the tax base imply that the timing of tax collections determines the distribution of tax burdens and wealth across households. Changes in financial policy do not only shift taxes across generations, but also within cohorts. Institutional deficit constraints...

In France, government debt steadily rose from just below 20% of GDP in 1980 to more than 60% today. This raises concerns about the sustainability of public finances i.e. whether the government's intertemporal budget constraint can be satisfied without a major change in fiscal policy practices...

While most economists accept the desirability of expansion of deficits over the short term there are a number of theoretical arguments that lead to the conclusion that higher government debt ratios might depress growth or lead to national insolvency. These have been further ?strengthened?...

This note shows that the Italian Mini BOTs proposed in 2019 bore the potential neither to become Italian legal tender nor to practically increase Italian government debt, but to practically cause a mere reduction in taxation and thence in government spending or transfers. Since the Eurozone...