Why do governments issue large amounts of debt? In what sense and for whom is such a policy optimal? We show that twisting the optimal taxation paradigm produces very reasonable predictions for debt and real interest rates. Adding an extra dimension of uncertainty about the political planning...

We study time-consistent debt policies in a trade-off model of debt in which the firm can freely issue new debt and repurchase existing debt. A debt policy is time-consistent if in any state equityholders prefer to follow it rather than to deviate from it but lose credibility in sustaining debt...

We study Ramsey optimal fiscal policy under incomplete markets in the case where the government issues only long bonds of maturity N 1. We find that many features of optimal policy are sensitive to the introduction of long bonds, in particular tax variability and the long-run behaviour of debt....

A tax-smoothing objective is used to assess the optimal consumption of public debt with respect to maturity and contingencies. This objective motivates the government to make its debt payout contingent on the levels of public outlay and the tax base. If these contingencies are present, but asset...

This paper shows that the patterns of optimal tax rates and borrowing in the presence of endogenous borrowing constraints differ considerably from the patterns observed with fully integrated capital markets. We study a developing country characterized by a costly tax collection. Its access to...