IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/eti/dpaper/14044.html

Public Debt Overhang in the Heterogeneous Agent Model

Author

Listed:
  • Keiichiro KOBAYASHI

Abstract

In this paper, I demonstrate that expansionary fiscal policy associated with an increase in public debt can cause a persistent recession. I assume that entrepreneurs have borrowing constraints and that the government issues debt and collects tax from productive entrepreneurs. The government can also transfer resources to workers. Under this setting, an increase in public debt per se can enhance economic growth as it can compensate for the shortage of liquidity. However, output decreases as the transfer increases due to the income effect of the transfer on workers increasing the wage rate. Noticeably, both output and interest rates decline as the transfer and debt become larger. This result challenges the widely accepted view that the negative effect of expansionary fiscal policy on output should be the crowding-out effect that works through a hike in interest rates. It also implies that redistribution from workers to productive agents may enhance economic growth.

Suggested Citation

  • Keiichiro KOBAYASHI, 2014. "Public Debt Overhang in the Heterogeneous Agent Model," Discussion papers 14044, Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI).
    • Handle: RePEc:eti:dpaper:14044
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.rieti.go.jp/jp/publications/dp/14e044.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. McCleary, Rachel & Barro, Robert, 2003. "Religion and Economic Growth across Countries," Scholarly Articles 3708464, Harvard University Department of Economics.
    2. Francesco Giavazzi & Marco Pagano, 1990. "Can Severe Fiscal Contractions Be Expansionary? Tales of Two Small European Countries," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 1990, Volume 5, pages 75-122, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Bengt Holmstrom & Jean Tirole, 1998. "Private and Public Supply of Liquidity," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 106(1), pages 1-40, February.
    4. Roberto Perotti, 1999. "Fiscal Policy in Good Times and Bad," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 114(4), pages 1399-1436.
    5. Checherita-Westphal, Cristina & Rother, Philipp, 2012. "The impact of high government debt on economic growth and its channels: An empirical investigation for the euro area," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 56(7), pages 1392-1405.
    6. Baum, Anja & Checherita-Westphal, Cristina & Rother, Philipp, 2013. "Debt and growth: New evidence for the euro area," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 32(C), pages 809-821.
    7. Robert J. Barro & Xavier Sala-i-Martin, 2003. "Economic Growth, 2nd Edition," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 2, volume 1, number 0262025531, December.
    8. Seshadri, Ananth & Yuki, Kazuhiro, 2004. "Equity and efficiency effects of redistributive policies," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(7), pages 1415-1447, October.
    9. Robert J. Barro, 2003. "Determinants of Economic Growth in a Panel of Countries," Annals of Economics and Finance, Society for AEF, vol. 4(2), pages 231-274, November.
    10. Stanley Fischer, 1991. "Growth, Macroeconomics, and Development," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 1991, Volume 6, pages 329-379, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Woodford, Michael, 1990. "Public Debt as Private Liquidity," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(2), pages 382-388, May.
    12. Carmen M. Reinhart & Vincent R. Reinhart & Kenneth S. Rogoff, 2012. "Public Debt Overhangs: Advanced-Economy Episodes since 1800," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 26(3), pages 69-86, Summer.
    13. Olivier Jean Blanchard & Stanley Fischer (ed.), 1991. "NBER Macroeconomics Annual 1991," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262521652, December.
    14. Gilles Saint-Paul, 1992. "Fiscal Policy in an Endogenous Growth Model," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 107(4), pages 1243-1259.
    15. Åsa Johansson & Yvan Guillemette & Fabrice Murtin & David Turner & Giuseppe Nicoletti & Christine de la Maisonneuve & Philip Bagnoli & Guillaume Bousquet & Francesca Spinelli, 2013. "Long-Term Growth Scenarios," OECD Economics Department Working Papers 1000, OECD Publishing.
    16. Marcus Scheiblecker & et al., 2003. "Österreichs Wirtschaft im Jahr 2002: Neuerlich ungenügendes Wachstum," WIFO Monatsberichte (monthly reports), WIFO, vol. 76(4), pages 257-323, April.
    17. Robert J. Barro & Rachel McCleary, 2003. "Religion and Economic Growth," NBER Working Papers 9682, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. Caballero, Ricardo J. & Krishnamurthy, Arvind, 2006. "Bubbles and capital flow volatility: Causes and risk management," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(1), pages 35-53, January.
    19. Real Arai & Takuma Kunieda & Keigo Nishida, 2014. "Is Public Debt Growth-Enhancing or Growth-Reducing?," KIER Working Papers 884, Kyoto University, Institute of Economic Research.
    20. Xavier Sala-i-Martín & Elsa V. Artadi, 2003. "Economic growth and investment in the Arab world," Economics Working Papers 683, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
    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. Keiichiro Kobayashi, 2015. "Public Debt Overhang and Economic Growth," Public Policy Review, Policy Research Institute, Ministry of Finance Japan, vol. 11(2), pages 247-276, March.

    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. Keiichiro Kobayashi, 2015. "Public Debt Overhang and Economic Growth," Public Policy Review, Policy Research Institute, Ministry of Finance Japan, vol. 11(2), pages 247-276, March.
    2. Kobayashi, Keiichiro, 2013. "A Theory of Public Debt Overhang," CIS Discussion paper series 589, Center for Intergenerational Studies, Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University.
    3. Ali, Amjad & Ur Rehman, Hafeez, 2015. "Macroeconomic Instability and Its Impact on Gross Domestic Product: An Empirical Analysis of Pakistan," MPRA Paper 71037, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Grobéty, Mathieu, 2018. "Government debt and growth: The role of liquidity," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 83(C), pages 1-22.
    5. Benjamin Jung, 2009. "Adjustment Dynamics of Bilateral Trade Flows: Theory and Evidence," Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics (SJES), Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics (SSES), vol. 145(IV), pages 421-442, December.
    6. Tarsalewska, Monika, 2015. "The timing of mergers along the production chain, capital structure, and risk dynamics," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 51-64.
    7. Antonio Ruíz Porras & Guillermo Rosales Jaramillo, 2014. "Crecimiento económico, banca y desarrollo financiero: evidencia internacional," Estudios Económicos, El Colegio de México, Centro de Estudios Económicos, vol. 29(2), pages 263-300.
    8. George M. Agiomirgianakis & George Sfakianakis & Fotini Voulgaris, 2016. "Determinants of economic growth revisited: is competitiveness and investment the solution for Greece?," International Economics and Economic Policy, Springer, vol. 13(3), pages 359-367, July.
    9. Le, Thanh, 2011. "Do government policies affect growth? Examining a model with R&D and factor accumulation," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 65(1), pages 62-70, March.
    10. Collins, Ross D. & Selin, Noelle E. & de Weck, Olivier L. & Clark, William C., 2017. "Using inclusive wealth for policy evaluation: Application to electricity infrastructure planning in oil-exporting countries," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 133(C), pages 23-34.
    11. repec:ejw:journl:v:6:y:2009:i:3:p:352-358 is not listed on IDEAS
    12. Kul Luintel & Mosahid Khan & Konstantinos Theodoridis, 2014. "On the robustness of R&D," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 42(2), pages 137-155, October.
    13. Dorota Ciołek, 2017. "Oszacowanie wartości produktu krajowego brutto w polskich powiatach," Gospodarka Narodowa. The Polish Journal of Economics, Warsaw School of Economics, issue 3, pages 55-87.
    14. Cerqueti, Roy & Coppier, Raffaella, 2011. "Economic growth, corruption and tax evasion," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 28(1-2), pages 489-500, January.
    15. repec:nbp:nbpbik:v:47:y:2016:i:6:p:463-494 is not listed on IDEAS
    16. Duranton, Gilles, 2006. "Some foundations for Zipf's law: Product proliferation and local spillovers," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 36(4), pages 542-563, July.
    17. Eduardo Cavallo & Sebastian Galiani & Ilan Noy & Juan Pantano, 2013. "Catastrophic Natural Disasters and Economic Growth," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 95(5), pages 1549-1561, December.
    18. Agnieszka Gehringer, 2015. "New evidence on the determinants of current accounts in the EU," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 42(4), pages 769-793, November.
    19. Laura Cabeza-García & Esther B. Del Brio & Mery Luz Oscanoa-Victorio, 2018. "Gender Factors and Inclusive Economic Growth: The Silent Revolution," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(1), pages 1-14, January.
    20. Wang, Min, 2010. "Essays on Environment, Natural Resource, Growth and Development," ISU General Staff Papers 201001010800002824, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.
    21. Rajeev K. Goel & James W. Saunoris & Friedrich Schneider, 2019. "Growth In The Shadows: Effect Of The Shadow Economy On U.S. Economic Growth Over More Than A Century," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 37(1), pages 50-67, January.
    22. Ju, Jiandong & Lin, Justin Yifu & Wang, Yong, 2015. "Endowment structures, industrial dynamics, and economic growth," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 244-263.

    More about this item

    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:eti:dpaper:14044. 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: TANIMOTO, Toko (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/rietijp.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.