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Working Paper
Decentralization and Overborrowing in a Fiscal Federation
We build an infinite horizon equilibrium model of fiscal federation, where anticipation of transfers from the central government creates incentives for local governments to overborrow. Absent commitment, the central government over-transfers, which distorts the central-local distribution of resources. Applying the model to fiscal decentralization, we find when decentralization widens local governments? fiscal gap, borrowings by both local and central governments rise. Quantitatively, fiscal decentralization accounts for from 19 percent to 40 percent of changes in general government debt in ...
Conference Paper
Jackson Hole 2023 - Global Financial Flows
How Much Debt Is Too Much? What History Shows
The U.K. had relatively high levels of public debt in the past 300 years, with its debt-to-GDP ratio exceeding 200% at times.
Working Paper
The Relationship between Debt and Output
In this paper we empirically explore the relationship between debt and output in a panel of 72 countries over the period 1970–2014 using a vector autoregression (VAR). We document two puzzling empirical findings that contrast with what is predicted by a standard small open economy model by Aguiar and Gopinath (2007), where debt and output endogenously respond to total factor productivity (TFP) shocks. First, developing countries’ debt falls after a positive output shock, while the model predicts a debt expansion. Second, output declines in developed and developing countries after a debt ...
Journal Article
Transmission of Sovereign Risk to Bank Lending
Banks hold a significant exposure to their own sovereigns. An increase in sovereign risk may hurt banks' balance sheets, causing a decrease in lending and a decline in economic activity. We quantify the transmission of sovereign risk to bank lending and provide new evidence about the effect of sovereign risk on economic outcomes. We consider the 1999 Marmara earthquake in Turkey as an exogenous shock leading to an increase in Turkey's default risk. Our empirical estimates show that, for banks holding a higher amount of government securities, the exogenous change in sovereign default risk ...
Briefing
Public and Private Debt after the Pandemic and Policy Normalization
As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, public debt has increased dramatically and private debt seems likely to increase as well. High indebtedness could influence the effectiveness of monetary policy and lead to political pressure for the Federal Reserve to maintain low interest rates for an extended period of time.
Speech
Remarks at the New York Fed’s Economic Press Briefing on the Regional Economy, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, New York City
Remarks at the Economic Press Briefing on the Regional Economy, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, New York City.
Speech
Update on economic and fiscal conditions in Puerto Rico
Remarks to the Association of Certified Public Accountants of Puerto Rico, San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Working Paper
Identifying Global and National Output and Fiscal Policy Shocks Using a GVAR
The paper contributes to the growing Global VAR (GVAR) literature by showing how global and national shocks can be identified within a GVAR framework. The usefulness of the proposed approach is illustrated in an application to the analysis of the interactions between public debt and real output growth in a multi-country setting, and the results are compared to those obtained from standard single-country VAR analysis. We find that on average (across countries) global shocks explain about one-third of the long-horizon forecast error variance of output growth, and about one-fifth of the long-run ...
Working Paper
Optimal Domestic (and External) Sovereign Default
Infrequent but turbulent episodes of outright sovereign default on domestic creditors are considered a ?forgotten history? in macroeconomics. We propose a heterogeneous- agents model in which optimal debt and default on domestic and foreign creditors are driven by distributional incentives and endogenous default costs due to value of debt for self-insurance, liquidity, and risk-sharing. The government?s aim to redistribute resources across agents and through time in response to uninsurable shocks produces a rich dynamic feedback mechanism linking debt issuance, the distribution of government ...