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The Safety of Government Debt

Author

Listed:
  • Kartik Anand
  • Prasanna Gai

Abstract

We examine the safety of government bonds in the presence of Knightian uncertainty amongst financial market participants. In our model, the information insensitivity of government bonds is driven by strategic complementarities across counterparties and the structure of trading relationships. We identify the frontier between safe and unsafe assets and show how the growth rate of the economy and its fiscal capacity interact with the degree of ambiguity amongst investors to determine the safe-asset equilibrium. We use our framework to illustrate a fiscal variation on the Triffin dilemma, in which the role of a country as sole provider of international liquidity is questioned as its size in the world economy – and hence its fiscal capacity – diminishes.

Suggested Citation

  • Kartik Anand & Prasanna Gai, 2013. "The Safety of Government Debt," Staff Working Papers 13-34, Bank of Canada.
    • Handle: RePEc:bca:bocawp:13-34
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Economic models; International financial markets; Financial stability;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E44 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Financial Markets and the Macroeconomy
    • D81 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty
    • F02 - International Economics - - General - - - International Economic Order and Integration
    • F41 - International Economics - - Macroeconomic Aspects of International Trade and Finance - - - Open Economy Macroeconomics
    • G15 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - International Financial Markets

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