IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cpr/ceprdp/6897.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

A Comparison of Debt and Primary-deficit Constraints

Author

Listed:
  • Beetsma, Roel
  • Schabert, Andreas
  • Ribeiro, Marcos Poplawski

Abstract

This paper compares constraints on the public debt with constraints on the primary deficit. The analysis takes into account how an optimizing government reacts to the different constraints when deciding on a spending and borrowing plan. We find that the economy behaves similarly under both constraints, although for our benchmark calibration welfare is higher under the debt constraint. Further, the debt constraint is more robust against changes in the interest rate. Our results lend support to the enhanced focus on the public debt after the recent reform of the Stability and Growth Pact.

Suggested Citation

  • Beetsma, Roel & Schabert, Andreas & Ribeiro, Marcos Poplawski, 2008. "A Comparison of Debt and Primary-deficit Constraints," CEPR Discussion Papers 6897, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    • Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:6897
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://cepr.org/publications/DP6897
    Download Restriction: CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org
    ---><---

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

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Aiyagari, S. Rao & McGrattan, Ellen R., 1998. "The optimum quantity of debt," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(3), pages 447-469, October.
    2. Buti, M. & Eijffinger, S.C.W. & Franco, D., 2005. "The Stability pact Pains : A Forward-Looking Assessment of the Reform Debate," Discussion Paper 2005-101, Tilburg University, Center for Economic Research.
    3. Beetsma, Roel M.W.J. & Jensen, Henrik, 2005. "Monetary and fiscal policy interactions in a micro-founded model of a monetary union," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(2), pages 320-352, December.
    4. Poplawski Ribeiro, Marcos & Beetsma, Roel, 2008. "The political economy of structural reforms under a deficit restriction," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 30(1), pages 179-198, March.
    5. Schmitt-Grohe, Stephanie & Uribe, Martin, 2004. "Solving dynamic general equilibrium models using a second-order approximation to the policy function," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 28(4), pages 755-775, January.
    6. Grossman, Herschel I & Van Huyck, John B, 1988. "Sovereign Debt as a Contingent Claim: Excusable Default, Repudiation, and Reputation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 78(5), pages 1088-1097, December.
    7. Bayoumi, Tamim & Goldstein, Morris & Woglom, Geoffrey, 1995. "Do Credit Markets Discipline Sovereign Borrowers? Evidence from the U.S. States," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 27(4), pages 1046-1059, November.
    8. Henrik Jensen, 2002. "Targeting Nominal Income Growth or Inflation?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(4), pages 928-956, September.
    9. Wyplosz, Charles & Krogstrup, Signe, 2006. "A Common Pool Theory of Deficit Bias Correction," CEPR Discussion Papers 5866, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    10. Pappa, Evi & Vassilatos, Vanghelis, 2007. "The unbearable tightness of being in a monetary union: Fiscal restrictions and regional stability," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 51(6), pages 1492-1513, August.
    11. Luisa Lambertini, 2007. "Optimal Fiscal Policy in a Monetary Union," Working Papers 200801, Center for Fiscal Policy, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne.
    12. Beetsma, Roel M.W.J. & Debrun, Xavier, 2007. "The new stability and growth pact: A first assessment," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 51(2), pages 453-477, February.
    13. Collard, Fabrice & Juillard, Michel, 2001. "A Higher-Order Taylor Expansion Approach to Simulation of Stochastic Forward-Looking Models with an Application to a Nonlinear Phillips Curve Model," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 17(2-3), pages 125-139, June.
    14. Frank Smets & Raf Wouters, 2003. "An Estimated Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium Model of the Euro Area," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 1(5), pages 1123-1175, September.
    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. Juan Carlos Hatchondo & Leonardo Martinez & Francisco Roch, 2012. "Fiscal rules and the sovereign default premium," Working Paper 12-01, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond.
    2. Pinaki Chakraborty, 2017. "Federalism, fiscal space, and public investment spending: do fiscal rules impose hard-budget constraints?," Chapters, in: Naoyuki Yoshino & Peter J. Morgan (ed.), Central and Local Government Relations in Asia, chapter 3, pages 103-129, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    3. Marcos Poplawski Ribeiro, 2009. "New Evidence on the Effectiveness of Europe's Fiscal Restrictions," Working Papers 2009-13, CEPII research center.
    4. Rieth, Malte, 2014. "Myopic governments and welfare-enhancing debt limits," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 250-265.
    5. Krogstrup, Signe & Wyplosz, Charles, 2010. "A common pool theory of supranational deficit ceilings," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 54(2), pages 269-278, February.
    6. Davide Furceri & Annabelle Mourougane, 2010. "The Effects of Fiscal Policy on Output: A DSGE Analysis," OECD Economics Department Working Papers 770, OECD Publishing.

    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. Rieth, Malte, 2014. "Myopic governments and welfare-enhancing debt limits," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 250-265.
    2. Kranz Tobias, 2017. "Calibrating the Equilibrium Condition of a New Keynesian Model with Uncertainty," Review of Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 68(2), pages 117-151, August.
    3. Mr. Xavier Debrun & Mr. Manmohan S. Kumar, 2007. "The Discipline-Enhancing Role of Fiscal Institutions: Theory and Empirical Evidence," IMF Working Papers 2007/171, International Monetary Fund.
    4. MAO TAKONGMO, Charles Olivier, 2019. "Keynesian Models, Detrending, and the Method of Moments," MPRA Paper 91709, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Mrs. Irina Yakadina & Mr. Michael Kumhof, 2007. "Politically Optimal Fiscal Policy," IMF Working Papers 2007/068, International Monetary Fund.
    6. Adjalala, Frida & Dissou, Yazid, 2023. "Idiosyncratic shocks in a currency union: Insights from West Africa," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 122(C).
    7. Günter Coenen & Giovanni Lombardo & Frank Smets & Roland Straub, 2007. "International Transmission and Monetary Policy Cooperation," NBER Chapters, in: International Dimensions of Monetary Policy, pages 157-192, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Charles Olivier Mao Takongmo, 2021. "DSGE models, detrending, and the method of moments," Bulletin of Economic Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 73(1), pages 67-99, January.
    9. St?phane Auray & Aur?lien Eyquem, 2014. "Welfare Reversals in a Monetary Union," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 6(4), pages 246-290, October.
    10. Paul Pichler, 2007. "Forecasting with estimated dynamic stochastic general equilibrium models: The role of nonlinearities," Vienna Economics Papers vie0702, University of Vienna, Department of Economics.
    11. Xavier Debrun, 2006. "Tying hands is not commitment- can fiscal rules and institutions really enhance fiscal discipline?," Working Papers 48, Bruegel.
    12. Ricardo Nunes & Jinill Kim & Jesper Linde & Davide Debortoli, 2014. "Designing a Simple Loss Function for the Fed: Does the Dual Mandate Make Sense?," 2014 Meeting Papers 1043, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    13. Boppart, Timo & Krusell, Per & Mitman, Kurt, 2018. "Exploiting MIT shocks in heterogeneous-agent economies: the impulse response as a numerical derivative," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 89(C), pages 68-92.
    14. repec:zbw:bofrdp:1997_008 is not listed on IDEAS
    15. Tatiana Kirsanova & Simon Wren‐Lewis, 2012. "Optimal Fiscal Feedback on Debt in an Economy with Nominal Rigidities," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 122(559), pages 238-264, March.
    16. Charles Olivier Mao Takongmo, 2017. "Government-spending multipliers and the zero lower bound in an open economy," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(5), pages 1046-1077, November.
    17. Mauro Costantini & Ulrich Gunter & Robert M. Kunst, 2017. "Forecast Combinations in a DSGE‐VAR Lab," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 36(3), pages 305-324, April.
    18. Hanson Michael S. & Kapinos Pavel S., 2008. "Endogenous Persistence and the Performance of Inertial Targeting Rules," The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, De Gruyter, vol. 8(1), pages 1-31, March.
    19. Paul Castillo & Carlos Montoro & Vicente Tuesta, 2005. "Inflation Premium and Oil Price Volatility," Working Papers Central Bank of Chile 350, Central Bank of Chile.
    20. Benchimol, Jonathan & Bounader, Lahcen, 2023. "Optimal monetary policy under bounded rationality," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 67(C).
    21. Lilia Maliar & Serguei Maliar & John B. Taylor & Inna Tsener, 2020. "A tractable framework for analyzing a class of nonstationary Markov models," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 11(4), pages 1289-1323, November.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Fiscal constraints; Myopia; Social welfare; Stability and growth pact;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E62 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Fiscal Policy; Modern Monetary Theory
    • H30 - Public Economics - - Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic Agents - - - General
    • H60 - Public Economics - - National Budget, Deficit, and Debt - - - General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:cpr:ceprdp:6897. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cepr.org .

    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.