Powered by OpenAIRE graph
Found an issue? Give us feedback
addClaim

Can Public Debt Be Sustainable? - A Contribution to the Theory of the Sustainability of Public Debt

Authors: Frank C. Englmann;

Can Public Debt Be Sustainable? - A Contribution to the Theory of the Sustainability of Public Debt

Abstract

The sustainability of government’s financial situation has two aspects: solvency and liquidity. The government is solvent if it satisfies its intertemporal budget constraint. In the steady state of a growing economy, the government is solvent if the public-debt-to-GDP ratio is constant and the real interest rate on government debt exceeds the growth rate of real GDP. The government is liquid if its instantaneous budget constraint is satisfied. According to Gartner 2009, for a constant primarydeficit-to-GDP ratio, this steady state debt-to-GDP ratio is unstable if the real interest rate on government debt exceeds the growth rate of real GDP. Hence, there seems to be a tension between sustainability concerning government’s solvency and sustainability concerning government’s liquidity if the latter is defined as stability of the steady state debt-to-GDP ratio. This leads to the main research question of this paper: Is it true that in a growing economy a constant debt-to-GDP ratio can only be stable if the government’s solvency constraint is violated? Or put differently: Is it true that public debt cannot be sustainable? Obviously, one counterexample is enough to show that a proposition does not hold in general. Such a counterexample based on the Solow growth model is presented in the paper. Hence, in general, sustainability of public debt is possible in the sense, that both the solvency constraint and the liquidity constraint with a stable steady state debt-to-GDP ratio are satisfied for a set of parameter constellations.

Related Organizations
  • BIP!
    Impact byBIP!
    selected citations
    These citations are derived from selected sources.
    This is an alternative to the "Influence" indicator, which also reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically).
    1
    popularity
    This indicator reflects the "current" impact/attention (the "hype") of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network.
    Average
    influence
    This indicator reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically).
    Average
    impulse
    This indicator reflects the initial momentum of an article directly after its publication, based on the underlying citation network.
    Average
Powered by OpenAIRE graph
Found an issue? Give us feedback
selected citations
These citations are derived from selected sources.
This is an alternative to the "Influence" indicator, which also reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically).
BIP!Citations provided by BIP!
popularity
This indicator reflects the "current" impact/attention (the "hype") of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network.
BIP!Popularity provided by BIP!
influence
This indicator reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically).
BIP!Influence provided by BIP!
impulse
This indicator reflects the initial momentum of an article directly after its publication, based on the underlying citation network.
BIP!Impulse provided by BIP!
1
Average
Average
Average
Upload OA version
Are you the author of this publication? Upload your Open Access version to Zenodo!
It’s fast and easy, just two clicks!