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Overaccumulation, Public Debt, and the Importance of Land

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  • Homburg, Stefan

Abstract

In recent contributions, Weizsäcker (2014) and Summers (2014) maintain that mature economies accumulate too much capital. They suggest large and lasting public deficits as a remedy. This paper argues that overaccumulation cannot occur in an economy with land. It presents novel data of aggregate land values, analyzes the issue in a stochastic framework, and conducts an empirical test of overaccumulation.

Suggested Citation

  • Homburg, Stefan, 2014. "Overaccumulation, Public Debt, and the Importance of Land," Hannover Economic Papers (HEP) dp-525, Leibniz Universität Hannover, Wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Fakultät.
  • Handle: RePEc:han:dpaper:dp-525
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Blog mentions

    As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
    1. On forgetting land in models of secular stagnation
      by Nick Rowe in Worthwhile Canadian Initiative on 2014-04-11 16:22:19

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Dynamic efficiency; overaccumulation; land; fiscal policy; public debt;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D9 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics
    • E62 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Fiscal Policy; Modern Monetary Theory
    • H21 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Efficiency; Optimal Taxation

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