This paper studies the maturity composition and the term structure of interest rate spreads of
government debt in emerging markets. In the data, when interest rate spreads rise, debt …

During the last three decades government debt has increased in most developed countries.
During the same period we have also observed a significant liberalization of international …

What considerations should guide public debt policy going forward? Should debt be
reduced to achieve normative anchors (such as 60 percent of GDP), should it be increased …

In this paper we study how a benevolent government that cannot commit to future policy
should trade off the costs and benefits of public expenditure. We characterize and solve for …

This paper proposes a dynamic politico‐economic theory of fiscal policy in a world
comprising a set of small open economies, whose driving force is the intergenerational …

The standard analysis of the efficient management of income taxes and debt assumes a
benevolent government and ignores potential distortions arising from rent-seeking …

A government that cannot commit to future policy choices faces a trade-off that explains the
level of debt. On the one hand, there is an incentive to increase debt and delay taxation, so …

This article develops a model of optimal government debt maturity in which the government
cannot issue state-contingent bonds and cannot commit to fiscal policy. If the government …

Due to time-inconsistency or political turnover, policymakers' promises are not always
fulfilled. We analyze an optimal fiscal policy problem where the plans made by the …

We survey recent theories of public debt that incorporate political decision making in rich
dynamic environments. These theories provide a new framework with which to interpret …