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Public debt stabilization: The relevance of policymakers’ time horizons

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  • Di Bartolomeo Giovanni
  • Di Pietro Marco
  • Semmler Willi

Abstract

Policymakers are stuck in time. Political short-termism, policy myopia, policy short-sightedness, and similar words have been coined to emphasize present-centric policy thinking. Politics tends to produce short time horizons and, as a result, policymakers often fail to take advantage of opportunities now to mitigate future harms. Focusing on fiscal and monetary strategic interactions, given different separate decision makers, our paper aims to explore the effects of policymakers’ time horizons on debt stabilization. To formalize our ideas, we use the novel concept of Nonlinear-model-predictive-control Feedback Nash Equilibrium (NFNE) and find that present-centric policy thinking and decision-making horizons matters along several dimensions.

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  • Di Bartolomeo Giovanni & Di Pietro Marco & Semmler Willi, 2017. "Public debt stabilization: The relevance of policymakers’ time horizons," wp.comunite 00135, Department of Communication, University of Teramo.
    • Handle: RePEc:ter:wpaper:00135
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