IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/pubeco/v115y2014icp117-130.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Government's credit-rating concerns and the evaluation of public projects

Author

Listed:
  • Levy, Nadav
  • Pauzner, Ady

Abstract

Public projects typically generate both monetary revenue and social benefits that cannot be monetized. We show that a government concerned with the credit rating of its debt should put different discount rates on these two aspects. The credit rating reflects the probability of default on the government's debt and thus affects its financing costs. Monetary revenues, which can be used in financial distress to repay debt, improve the credit rating and thus carry an additional “credit-market value” compared to social benefits. However, informational problems – dynamic inconsistency and adverse selection – push the government to an excessive emphasis on social benefits, ignoring the external effect of monetary revenue on debtholders. Since the credit market anticipates this, the government's credit rating is adversely affected and it is thus unable to extract the full potential value of the projects. Privatization can sometimes alleviate these problems; However, the option to privatize has complex effects on the market's assessment of projects that remain in government's hands and thus might sometimes be harmful.

Suggested Citation

  • Levy, Nadav & Pauzner, Ady, 2014. "Government's credit-rating concerns and the evaluation of public projects," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 115(C), pages 117-130.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:pubeco:v:115:y:2014:i:c:p:117-130
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2013.11.007
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S004727271300217X
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2013.11.007?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Patrick Bolton & Olivier Jeanne, 2011. "Sovereign Default Risk and Bank Fragility in Financially Integrated Economies," IMF Economic Review, Palgrave Macmillan;International Monetary Fund, vol. 59(2), pages 162-194, June.
    2. Calvo, Guillermo A, 1988. "Servicing the Public Debt: The Role of Expectations," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 78(4), pages 647-661, September.
    3. Bulow, Jeremy & Rogoff, Kenneth, 1989. "A Constant Recontracting Model of Sovereign Debt," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 97(1), pages 155-178, February.
    4. Harold L. Cole & Timothy J. Kehoe, 2000. "Self-Fulfilling Debt Crises," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 67(1), pages 91-116.
    5. Edwards, Sebastian, 1986. "Country risk, foreign borrowing, and the social discount rate in an open developing economy," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 5(1, Supple), pages 79-96, March.
    6. Jeffry M. Netter & William L. Megginson, 2001. "From State to Market: A Survey of Empirical Studies on Privatization," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 39(2), pages 321-389, June.
    7. Sjaastad, Larry A & Wisecarver, Daniel L, 1977. "The Social Cost of Public Finance," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 85(3), pages 513-547, June.
    8. John Vickers & George Yarrow, 1991. "Economic Perspectives on Privatization," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 5(2), pages 111-132, Spring.
    9. Oliver Hart & Andrei Shleifer & Robert W. Vishny, 1997. "The Proper Scope of Government: Theory and an Application to Prisons," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 112(4), pages 1127-1161.
    10. Stephen A. Marglin, 1963. "The Social Rate of Discount and The Optimal Rate of Investment," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 77(1), pages 95-111.
    11. Jonathan Eaton & Mark Gersovitz, 1981. "Debt with Potential Repudiation: Theoretical and Empirical Analysis," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 48(2), pages 289-309.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Emanuele Padovani & Luca Rescigno & Jacopo Ceccatelli, 2018. "Municipal Bond Debt and Sustainability in a Non-Mature Financial Market: The Case of Italy," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(9), pages 1-25, September.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Eijffinger, Sylvester C.W. & Karataş, Bilge, 2023. "Three sisters: The interlinkage between sovereign debt, currency, and banking crises," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 131(C).
    2. Karatas, B., 2014. "Financial crisis and monetary policy," Other publications TiSEM 41e463f0-e122-4379-8db5-6, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    3. Fabrice Collard & Michel Habib & Jean-Charles Rochet, 2015. "Sovereign Debt Sustainability In Advanced Economies," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 13(3), pages 381-420, June.
    4. Russell Cooper & Kalin Nikolov, 2018. "Government Debt And Banking Fragility: The Spreading Of Strategic Uncertainty," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 59(4), pages 1905-1925, November.
    5. Niepelt, Dirk, 2014. "Debt maturity without commitment," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(S), pages 37-54.
    6. Arellano, Cristina & Kocherlakota, Narayana, 2014. "Internal debt crises and sovereign defaults," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(S), pages 68-80.
    7. Cheng, Jin & Dai, Meixing & Dufourt, Frédéric, 2017. "Banking and sovereign debt crises in a monetary union without central bank intervention," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(C), pages 142-151.
    8. Auclert, Adrien & Rognlie, Matthew, 2016. "Unique equilibrium in the Eaton–Gersovitz model of sovereign debt," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 84(C), pages 134-146.
    9. Patrick Bolton & Haizhou Huang, 2017. "The Capital Structure of Nations," NBER Working Papers 23612, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Aguiar, Mark & Amador, Manuel, 2019. "A contraction for sovereign debt models," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 183(C), pages 842-875.
    11. Bolton, Patrick & Huang, Haizhou, 2017. "The Capital Structure of Nations," CEPR Discussion Papers 12157, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    12. Dirk Niepelt, 2009. "Sovereign Debt Maturity without Commitment," 2009 Meeting Papers 231, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    13. Diego J. Perez, 2015. "Sovereign Debt, Domestic Banks and the Provision of Public Liquidity," Discussion Papers 15-016, Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.
    14. Patrick Bolton & Haizhou Huang, 2018. "The Capital Structure of Nations [Welfare analysis of currency regimes with defaultable debts]," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 22(1), pages 45-82.
    15. Jin Cheng & Meixing Dai & Frédéric Dufourt, 2014. "Banking and Sovereign Debt Crises in a Monetary Union Without Central Bank Intervention," Working Papers halshs-01009684, HAL.
    16. Cornand, Camille & Gandré, Pauline & Gimet, Céline, 2016. "Increase in home bias in the Eurozone debt crisis: The role of domestic shocks," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 445-469.
    17. Aguiar, M. & Chatterjee, S. & Cole, H. & Stangebye, Z., 2016. "Quantitative Models of Sovereign Debt Crises," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 1697-1755, Elsevier.
    18. Cristina Arellano, 2005. "Default Risk, the Real Exchange Rate and Income Fluctuations in Emerging Economies," 2005 Meeting Papers 516, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    19. Guido Lorenzoni & Iván Werning, 2019. "Slow Moving Debt Crises," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 109(9), pages 3229-3263, September.
    20. Joao Ayres & Gaston Navarro & Juan Pablo Nicolini & Pedro Teles, 2019. "Self-Fulfilling Debt Crises with Long Stagnations," Working Papers 757, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:pubeco:v:115:y:2014:i:c:p:117-130. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/505578 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.