IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/21799.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

A History of U.S. Debt Limits

Author

Listed:
  • George J. Hall
  • Thomas J. Sargent

Abstract

Congress first imposed an aggregate debt limit in 1939 when it delegated decisions about designing US debt instruments to the Treasury. Before World War I, Congress designed each bond and specified a maximum amount of each bond that the Treasury could issue. It usually specified purposes for which proceeds could be spent. We construct and interpret a Federal debt limit before 1939.

Suggested Citation

  • George J. Hall & Thomas J. Sargent, 2015. "A History of U.S. Debt Limits," NBER Working Papers 21799, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:21799
    Note: DAE EFG ME POL
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w21799.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Francois R. Velde & Warren E. Weber, 2000. "A Model of Bimetallism," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 108(6), pages 1210-1234, December.
    2. Garbade, Kenneth D., 2012. "Birth of a Market: The U.S. Treasury Securities Market from the Great War to the Great Depression," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262016370, December.
    3. George J. Hall & Thomas J. Sargent, 2011. "Interest Rate Risk and Other Determinants of Post-WWII US Government Debt/GDP Dynamics," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 3(3), pages 192-214, July.
    4. Thomas J. Sargent & Neil Wallace, 1984. "Some Unpleasant Monetarist Arithmetic," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Brian Griffiths & Geoffrey E. Wood (ed.), Monetarism in the United Kingdom, pages 15-41, Palgrave Macmillan.
    5. Thomas J. Sargent, 2013. "Rational Expectations and Inflation (Third Edition)," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 3, volume 1, number 10000.
    6. Elisa Faraglia & Albert Marcet & Rigas Oikonomou & Andrew Scott, 2019. "Government Debt Management: The Long and the Short of It," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 86(6), pages 2554-2604.
    7. Elisa Faraglia & Albert Marcet & Rigas Oikonomou & Andrew Scott, 2014. "Government Debt Management: The Long and the Short of It (Plus Appendix)," Working Papers 799, Barcelona School of Economics.
    8. Kagin, Donald H., 1984. "Monetary Aspects of the Treasury Notes of the War of 1812," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 44(1), pages 69-88, March.
    9. Garber, Peter M. & Grilli, Vittorio U., 1986. "The Belmont-Morgan Syndicate as an optimal investment banking contract," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 30(3), pages 649-677, June.
    10. H. J. Cooke & M. Katzen, 1954. "The Public Debt Limit," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 9(3), pages 298-303, 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. John H. Cochrane, 2017. "Michelson-Morley, Fisher, and Occam: The Radical Implications of Stable Quiet Inflation at the Zero Bound," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2017, volume 32, pages 113-226, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    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. George J. Hall & Thomas J. Sargent, 2015. "A History of U.S. Debt Limits," NBER Working Papers 21799, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. George J. Hall & Thomas J. Sargent, 2020. "Debt and Taxes in Eight U.S. Wars and Two Insurrections," NBER Working Papers 27115, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Jochen Mankart & Rigas Oikonomou, 2017. "Household Search and the Aggregate Labour Market," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 84(4), pages 1735-1788.
    4. Campbell Leith & Eric Leeper, 2016. "Understanding Inflation as a Joint Monetary-Fiscal Phenomenon," Working Papers 2016_01, Business School - Economics, University of Glasgow.
    5. Francesco Bianchi & Leonardo Melosi, 2017. "Escaping the Great Recession," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 107(4), pages 1030-1058, April.
    6. Eric M. Leeper & Todd B. Walker, 2012. "Perceptions and Misperceptions of Fiscal Inflation," NBER Chapters, in: Fiscal Policy after the Financial Crisis, pages 255-299, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Berndt, Antje & Yeltekin, Şevin, 2015. "Monetary policy, bond returns and debt dynamics," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 73(C), pages 119-136.
    8. Francesco Bianchi & Leonardo Melosi, 2022. "Inflation as a Fiscal Limit," Working Paper Series WP 2022-37, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.
    9. Alex Clymo & Andrea Lanteri, 2020. "Fiscal Policy with Limited-Time Commitment," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 130(627), pages 623-652.
    10. Francesco Bianchi & Leonardo Melosi, 2014. "Dormant Shocks and Fiscal Virtue," NBER Macroeconomics Annual, University of Chicago Press, vol. 28(1), pages 1-46.
    11. Adam Brzezinski & Roberto Bonfatti & K. KıvançKaraman & Nuno Palma, 2020. "Monetary Capacity," Economics Series Working Papers 926, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    12. Boris Chafwehé & Rigas Oikonomou & Romanos Priftis & Lukas Vogel, 2021. "(Optimal) Monetary Policy with and without Debt," Staff Working Papers 21-5, Bank of Canada.
    13. Jiang, Zhengyang & Lustig, Hanno & Van Nieuwerburgh, Stijn & Xiaolan, Mindy Z., 2019. "The Government Risk Premium Puzzle," Research Papers 3831, Stanford University, Graduate School of Business.
    14. Katagiri, Mitsuru & Konishi, Hideki & Ueda, Kozo, 2020. "Aging and deflation from a fiscal perspective," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 111(C), pages 1-15.
    15. Francesco Bianchi & Cosmin Ilut, 2017. "Monetary/Fiscal Policy Mix and Agent's Beliefs," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 26, pages 113-139, October.
    16. Leeper, E.M. & Leith, C., 2016. "Understanding Inflation as a Joint Monetary–Fiscal Phenomenon," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 2305-2415, Elsevier.
    17. Bonam, Dennis & Ciccarelli, Matteo & Gomes, Sandra & Aldama, Pierre & Bańkowski, Krzysztof & Buss, Ginters & da Costa, José Cardoso & Christoffel, Kai & Elfsbacka Schmöller, Michaela & Jacquinot, Pasc, 2024. "Challenges for monetary and fiscal policy interactions in the post-pandemic era," Occasional Paper Series 337, European Central Bank.
    18. Jean Marie Gankou & Marcellin Ndong Ntah & Kirsi Zongo, 2019. "Determinants of external debt in Mauritania [Déterminants de la dette extérieure en Mauritanie]," Post-Print hal-03577999, HAL.
    19. Francesco Bianchi & Renato Faccini & Leonardo Melosi, 2020. "Monetary and Fiscal Policies in Times of Large Debt: Unity is Strength," Working Paper Series WP 2020-13, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.
    20. Charles W. Calomiris, 1992. "Greenback Resumption and Silver Risk: The Economics and Politics of Monetary Regime Change in the United States, 1862-1900," NBER Working Papers 4166, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E6 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook
    • H6 - Public Economics - - National Budget, Deficit, and Debt
    • N21 - Economic History - - Financial Markets and Institutions - - - U.S.; Canada: Pre-1913
    • N41 - Economic History - - Government, War, Law, International Relations, and Regulation - - - U.S.; Canada: Pre-1913

    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:nbr:nberwo:21799. 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://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.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.