IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/aejmac/v14y2022i4p404-37.html

Optimal Public Debt with Life Cycle Motives

Author

Listed:
  • William B. Peterman
  • Erick Sager

Abstract

This paper determines optimal public debt in a life cycle model with incomplete markets that matches the empirically observed variation in consumption, labor, and savings. We find that public savings—not public debt—equal to 168 percent of output is optimal, primarily due to the influence of the life cycle on household decision-making. By inducing a lower interest rate, public savings slow consumption and leisure growth over an average household's lifetime, and the resulting flatter allocation of lifetime consumption and leisure improves welfare. These life cycle welfare benefits are large—on net, they outweigh the transitional costs from a tax-financed public debt elimination.

Suggested Citation

  • William B. Peterman & Erick Sager, 2022. "Optimal Public Debt with Life Cycle Motives," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 14(4), pages 404-437, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:aea:aejmac:v:14:y:2022:i:4:p:404-37
    DOI: 10.1257/mac.20180247
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/mac.20180247
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://doi.org/10.3886/E141661V1
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/mac.20180247.appx
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/mac.20180247.ds
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1257/mac.20180247?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
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Pedro Brinca & Miguel H. Ferreira & Francesco Franco & Hans A. Holter & Laurence Malafry, 2021. "Fiscal Consolidation Programs And Income Inequality," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 62(1), pages 405-460, February.
    2. Rafael Azevedo & Luis Bettoni & Marcelo Santos, 2024. "Severance savings accounts and life-cycle savings," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 78(4), pages 1275-1331, December.
    3. Patrick Macnamara & Myroslav Pidkuyko & Raffaele Rossi, 2022. "Taxing Consumption in Unequal Economies," Economics Discussion Paper Series 2210, Economics, The University of Manchester.
    4. Bence Bardóczy, 2024. "HANK Comes of Age: Monetary Policy with Heterogeneous Overlapping Generations," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2024-052r1, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.), revised 19 Dec 2025.
    5. Takahashi, Yuta & Takayama, Naoki, 2025. "A parsimonious model for zero inflation at the zero lower bound," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 247(C).
    6. Zuzana Mucka & Ludovit Odor, 2018. "Optimal sovereign debt: Case of Slovakia," Working Papers Working Paper No. 3/2018, Council for Budget Responsibility.
    7. Blandin, Adam & Peterman, William B., 2019. "Taxing capital? The importance of how human capital is accumulated," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 482-508.
    8. Hedlund, Aaron, 2018. "Credit constraints, house prices, and the impact of life cycle dynamics," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 171(C), pages 202-207.
    9. Bettoni, Luis G. & Santos, Marcelo, 2023. "Optimal fiscal policy in incomplete market business cycle economies," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 89(C), pages 218-226.
    10. Gale, William G., 2019. "Fiscal policy with high debt and low interest rates," MPRA Paper 99207, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    11. Brinca, Pedro & Faria-e-Castro, Miguel & Ferreira, Miguel H. & Holter, Hans A. & Nóbrega, Valter, 2025. "The nonlinear effects of fiscal policy," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 252(C).
    12. Ono, Taiki, 2024. "Bequests and wealth inequality in Japan," Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, Elsevier, vol. 72(C).
    13. Aaron Hedlund, 2018. "Credit Constraints, House Prices, and the Impact of Life Cycle Dynamics," Working Papers 1807, Department of Economics, University of Missouri.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D15 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Intertemporal Household Choice; Life Cycle Models and Saving
    • D52 - Microeconomics - - General Equilibrium and Disequilibrium - - - Incomplete Markets
    • E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth
    • E43 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Interest Rates: Determination, Term Structure, and Effects
    • E62 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Fiscal Policy; Modern Monetary Theory
    • G51 - Financial Economics - - Household Finance - - - Household Savings, Borrowing, Debt, and Wealth
    • H63 - Public Economics - - National Budget, Deficit, and Debt - - - Debt; Debt Management; Sovereign Debt

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:aea:aejmac:v:14:y:2022:i:4:p:404-37. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Michael P. Albert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aeaaaea.html .

    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.