IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/mse/cesdoc/13042.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Government Solvency, Austerity and Fiscal Consolidation in the OECD: A Keynesian Appraisal of Transversality and No Ponzi Game Conditions

Author

Abstract

This paper investigates the relevance of the No-Ponzi game condition for public debt (i.e. the public debt growth rates has to be lower than the real interest rate, a necessary assumption for Ricardian equivalence) and of the transversality condition for the GDP growth rate (i.e. the GDP growth rate has to be lower than the real interest rate). First, on the unbalanced panel of 21 countries from 1961 to 2010 available in OECD database, those two conditions were simultaneously validated only for 29% of the cases under examination. Second, those two conditions were more frequent in the 1980s and the 1990s when monetary policies were more restrictive. Third, in tune with the Keynesian view, when the real interest rate is higher than the GDP growth, it corresponds to 75% of the cases of the increases of the debt/GDP ratio but to only 43% of the cases of the decreases of the debt/GDP ratio (fiscal consolidations)

Suggested Citation

  • Karim Azizi & Nicolas Canry & Jean-Bernard Chatelain & Bruno Tinel, 2013. "Government Solvency, Austerity and Fiscal Consolidation in the OECD: A Keynesian Appraisal of Transversality and No Ponzi Game Conditions," Documents de travail du Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne 13042, Université Panthéon-Sorbonne (Paris 1), Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne.
    • Handle: RePEc:mse:cesdoc:13042
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: ftp://mse.univ-paris1.fr/pub/mse/CES2013/13042.pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Amable, Bruno & Chatelain, Jean-Bernard & Ralf, Kirsten, 2010. "Patents as collateral," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 34(6), pages 1092-1104, June.
    2. Thomas Herndon & Michael Ash & Robert Pollin, 2014. "Does high public debt consistently stifle economic growth? A critique of Reinhart and Rogoff," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 38(2), pages 257-279.
    3. Kamihigashi, Takashi, 2005. "Necessity of the transversality condition for stochastic models with bounded or CRRA utility," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 29(8), pages 1313-1329, August.
    4. Jean-Bernard Chatelain & Kirsten Ralf, 2012. "The Failure Of Financial Macroeconomics And What To Do About It," Manchester School, University of Manchester, vol. 80, pages 21-53, September.
    5. Barro, Robert J, 1974. "Are Government Bonds Net Wealth?," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 82(6), pages 1095-1117, Nov.-Dec..
    6. Thomas Piketty, 2011. "On the Long-Run Evolution of Inheritance: France 1820--2050," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 126(3), pages 1071-1131.
    7. Chatelain, Jean-Bernard & Ralf, Kirsten, 2014. "Spurious regressions and near-multicollinearity, with an application to aid, policies and growth," EconStor Open Access Articles, ZBW - German National Library of Economics, pages 85-96.
    8. Chatelain, Jean-Bernard, 2010. "Can statistics do without artefacts?," MPRA Paper 42867, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. Olivier J. Blanchard & Daniel Leigh, 2013. "Growth Forecast Errors and Fiscal Multipliers," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 103(3), pages 117-120, May.
    10. Muriel Pucci & Bruno Tinel, 2011. "Réductions d'impôts et dette publique en France," Revue de l'OFCE, Presses de Sciences-Po, vol. 0(1), pages 125-148.
    11. Haliassos, Michael & Tobin, James, 1990. "The macroeconomics of government finance," Handbook of Monetary Economics,in: B. M. Friedman & F. H. Hahn (ed.), Handbook of Monetary Economics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 17, pages 889-959 Elsevier.
    12. Heijdra, Ben J., 2017. "Foundations of Modern Macroeconomics," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, edition 3, number 9780198784135.
    13. Amable, Bruno & Azizi, Karim, 2011. "Varieties of capitalism and varieties of macroeconomic policy. Are some economies more procyclical than others?," MPIfG Discussion Paper 11/6, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies.
    14. Halkin, Hubert, 1974. "Necessary Conditions for Optimal Control Problems with Infinite Horizons," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 42(2), pages 267-272, March.
    15. Michel, Philippe, 1982. "On the Transversality Condition in Infinite Horizon Optimal Problems," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(4), pages 975-985, July.
    16. Jean-Bernard Chatelain, 2010. "Can Statistics Do without Artefacts?," Working Papers hal-00750495, HAL.
    17. Olivier Jean Blanchard & Stanley Fischer, 1989. "Lectures on Macroeconomics," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262022834, January.
    18. Philip Arestis & Malcolm Sawyer, 2004. "On the Effectiveness of Monetary Policy and of Fiscal Policy," Review of Social Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 62(4), pages 441-463.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Government solvency; austerity; fiscal consolidation; No-Ponzi game condition; transversality condition; Keynesian countercyclical budgetary policy; monetary policy; economic growth;

    JEL classification:

    • E43 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Interest Rates: Determination, Term Structure, and Effects
    • E5 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit
    • E6 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook
    • H6 - Public Economics - - National Budget, Deficit, and Debt
    • O4 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity

    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:mse:cesdoc:13042. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Lucie Label). General contact details of provider: http://edirc.repec.org/data/cenp1fr.html .

    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 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.

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.