IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/mse/cesdoc/v07042.html

Public debt and aggregate risk

Author

Listed:
  • Audrey Desbonnet

    (Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne)

  • Sumudu Kankanamge

    (Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne)

Abstract

This paper assesses the optimal level of public debt in a new framework where aggregate fluctuations are taken into account. Agents are subject to both aggregate and idiosyncratic shocks and the market structure prevents them from perfectly insuring against the risk. We find that the optimal level of debt is very different when aggregate risk is taken into account: a simple idiosyncratic model generates a quarterly optimal level of debt of 60 % of GDP, our benchmark model embedding aggregate risk finds the quarterly optimal level of debt to be 180 % of GDP, our benchmark model embedding aggregate risk finds the quarterly optimal level of debt to be 180 % of GDP. Thus aggregate fluctuations have a strong positive impact on the level of public debt in the economy. Aggregate fluctuations exacerbate the overall risk level in the economy and households are forced to increase their precautionary saving in response. Public debt and the implied higher interest rate generate a strong effect that helps precautionary saving behavior

Suggested Citation

  • Audrey Desbonnet & Sumudu Kankanamge, 2007. "Public debt and aggregate risk," Documents de travail du Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne v07042, Université Panthéon-Sorbonne (Paris 1), Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne.
    • Handle: RePEc:mse:cesdoc:v07042
    DOI: 10.1017/S1365100516000092
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://shs.hal.science/halshs-00175877
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1365100516000092
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1017/S1365100516000092?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Dieppe, Alistair & Mourinho Félix, Ricardo & Marchiori, Luca & Grech, Owen & Albani, Maria & Lalouette, Laure & Kulikov, Dmitry & Papadopoulou, Niki & Sideris, Dimitris & Irac, Delphine & Gordo Mora, , 2015. "Public debt, population ageing and medium-term growth," Occasional Paper Series 165, European Central Bank.
    2. Cozzi, Marco, 2023. "Public debt and welfare in a quantitative Schumpeterian growth model with incomplete markets," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 77(C).
    3. Zhang, Yuewen, 2010. "Sovereign Risk Management in Recession: The Cases of Sweden and China," MPRA Paper 23364, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Bettoni, Luis G. & Santos, Marcelo, 2023. "Optimal fiscal policy in incomplete market business cycle economies," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 89(C), pages 218-226.
    5. Javier Andrés & Javier J. Pérez & Juan A. Rojas, 2017. "Implicit public debt thresholds: an empirical exercise for the case of Spain," Working Papers 1701, Banco de España.
    6. Petia Topalova & Dan Nyberg, 2010. "What Level of Public Debt Could India Target?," IMF Working Papers 2010/007, International Monetary Fund.
    7. Marco Cozzi, 2019. "Has the Canadian Public Debt Been Too High? A Quantitative Assessment," Department Discussion Papers 1901, Department of Economics, University of Victoria.
    8. repec:ecb:ecbops:2014165 is not listed on IDEAS

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • E32 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Business Fluctuations; Cycles
    • E63 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Comparative or Joint Analysis of Fiscal and Monetary Policy; Stabilization; Treasury Policy
    • H31 - Public Economics - - Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic Agents - - - Household

    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:v07042. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Lucie Label (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cenp1fr.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.