Public debt and aggregate risk
Abstract
This paper assesses the long-run optimal level of public debt in a framework where aggregate fluctuations are taken into account. Households are subject to both aggregate and idiosyncratic shocks and the market structure prevents them from perfectly insuring against risk. We find that the long-run optimal level of public debt is generally higher in a setting embedding aggregate fluctuations than in a setting without. Aggregate fluctuations modify both the cost and the motive for precautionary saving. Higher levels of public debt, by effectively reducing the cost of precautionary saving, help agents to smooth consumption when they face price and employment fluctuations.Download Info
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.Bibliographic Info
Paper provided by HAL in its series Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) with number halshs-00175877.Length:
Date of creation: Aug 2008
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:hal:cesptp:halshs-00175877
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: http://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00175877
Contact details of provider:
Web page: http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/
Related research
Keywords: Public debt; aggregate risk; precautionary saving; credit constraints.;Other versions of this item:
- Audrey Desbonnet & Sumudu Kankanamge, 2007. "Public debt and aggregate risk," Documents de travail du Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne v07042, Université Panthéon-Sorbonne (Paris 1), Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne.
- E32 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Business Fluctuations; Cycles
- E63 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Comparative or Joint Analysis of Fiscal and Monetary Policy; Stabilization; Treasury Policy
- H31 - Public Economics - - Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic Agents - - - Household
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
- NEP-ALL-2008-10-28 (All new papers)
- NEP-DGE-2008-10-28 (Dynamic General Equilibrium)
References
No references listed on IDEASYou can help add them by filling out this form.
Citations
Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.Cited by:
- Petia Topalova & Dan Nyberg, 2010. "What Level of Public Debt Could India Target?," IMF Working Papers 10/7, International Monetary Fund.
- Zhang, Yuewen, 2010. "Sovereign Risk Management in Recession: The Cases of Sweden and China," MPRA Paper 23364, University Library of Munich, Germany.
Lists
This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.Statistics
Access and download statisticsCorrections
When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hal:cesptp:halshs-00175877For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (CCSD).
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 references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.
If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link 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 profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.
Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

