A public debt theory is constructed in which the Ricardian invariance theorem is valid as a first-order proposition but where the dependence of excess burden on the timing of taxation implies an optimal time path of debt issue. A central proposition is that deficits are varied in order to maintain expect ed constancy in tax rates. This behavior implies a positive effect on debt issue of temporary increases in government spending (as in wartime) a countercyclical response of debt to temporary income movements, and a one-to-one effect of expected inflation on nominal debt growth. Debt issue would be invariant with the outstanding debt-income ratio and, except for a minor effect, with the level of government spending. Hypotheses are tested on U.S. data since World WXar1. Results are basically in accord Fith the theory. It also turns out that a small set of explanatory variables can account for the principal movements in interest-bearing federal debt since the 1920s.

Earlier analysis of unanticipated money growth is extended to output (GNP) and the price level (GNP deflator) for recent U.S. experience. Price level determination is more complicated than output determination, because both anticipated and unanticipated money movements are involved. Empirical results accord well with the model--notably, they support the key hypothesis of a one-to-one, contemporaneous link between anticipated money and the price level. Precise estimates are obtained for the lagged responses of output and prices to unanticipated money movements. Cross-equation comparisons indicate that the price response to unanticipated money movements has a longer lag than the output response. A form of lagged adjustment in money demand can account for this difference. The forecasts for inflation average 5.5 percent per year for 1977-80.

Feldstein's comment deals with my conclusion that government debt (and social security) will not add to net wealth in a model with operative intergenerational transfers (either from old to young or from young to old). He accepts this conclusion in the case of a static economy, but argues that it is incorrect when the economy is growing. It is important to distinguish two cases-the first in which the growth rate, g (the sum of population growth and growth in real income per head), is below the steady-state (real) rate of return, r; and the second where g > r.1 The first case is straightforward and turns out to require no modifications to my previous results. Feldstein's contrary conclusion is the result of an error in calculating present values of future tax liabilities. The second case is both more interesting and more difficult, and I present some analysis of it below. Suppose that the economy is in a steady state with output growing at rate g. The (real) rate of return is constant and equal to r. Consider, first, the case in which r > g. In this situation Feldstein (pp. 333-334) considers the impact of government debt that grows at rate g, so that the ratio of debt to income remains constant over time.2 He argues, ". . . some

The assumption that government bonds are perceived as net wealth by the private sector is crucial in demonstrating real effects of shifts in the stock of public debt. In particular, the standard effects of "expansionary" fiscal policy on aggregate demand hinge on this assumption. Government bonds will be perceived as net wealth only if their value exceeds the capitalized value of the implied stream of future tax liabilities. This paper considers the effects on bond values and tax capitalization of finite lives, imperfect private capital markets, a government monopoly in the production of bond "liquidity services," and uncertainty about future tax obligations. It is shown within the context of an overlapping-generations model that finite lives will not be relevant to the capitalization of future tax liabilities so long as current generations are connected to future generations by a chain of operative intergenerational transfers (either in the direction from old to young or in the direction from young to old). Applications of this result to social security and to other types of imposed intergenerational transfer schemes are also noted. In the presence of imperfect private capital markets, government debt issue will increase net wealth if the government is more efficient, at the margin, than the private market in carrying out the loan process. Similarly, if the government has monopoly power in the production of bond "liquidity services," then public debt issue will raise net wealth. Finally, the existence of uncertainty with respect to individual future tax liabilities implies that public debt issue may increase the overall risk contained in household balance sheets and thereby effectively reduce household wealth.

This paper applies previous theoretical and empirical results on inflation and demand for money to a study of inflationary finance and the welfare cost of inflation. The amount of revenue generated by a steady inflation is derived as a function of the inflation rate and some underlying parameters. Empirically, the revenue-maximizing rate is on the order of 140 percent per month with the corresponding revenue approximating 15 percent of national income. It is argued that hyper-inflations become unstable when the revenue-maximizing rate is exceeded. Because inflation leads to higher transaction costs (resulting from greater payment frequencies and reduced use of "money" as a payments medium), there is a net social cost attached to inflationary finance. The model implies that marginal collection costs of inflationary finance exceed 50 percent for all positive rates of inflation-hence, alternative means of raising revenue should be socially preferable. The analysis also provides estimates of the social gain from moving to the optimum quantity of money as 1-3 percent of income.

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Robert J. Barro, Herschel I. Grossman; Suppressed Inflation and the Supply Multiplier12, The Review of Economic Studies, Volume 41, Issue 1, 1 January 1974, Pag

We derive an options-pricing formula from recursive preferences and estimate rare disaster probability. The new options-pricing formula applies to far out-of-the-money put options on the stock market when disaster risk dominates, the size distribution of disasters follows a power law, and the economy has a representative agent with a constant-relative-risk-aversion utility function. The formula conforms with options data on the Standard & Poor's (S&P) 500 Index from 1983 to 2018 and for analogous indices for other countries. The disaster probability, inferred from monthly fixed effects, is highly correlated across countries, peaks during the Global Financial Crisis, and forecasts rates of economic growth.

For U.S. annual data that include World War II, the estimated multiplier for temporary defense spending is 0.4–0.5 contemporaneously and 0.6–0.7 over 2 years. If the change in defense spending is “permanent” (gauged by Ramey's defense news variable), the multipliers are higher by 0.1–0.2. Since all estimated multipliers are significantly less than 1, greater spending crowds out other components of GDP, particularly investment. The lack of good instruments prevents estimation of reliable multipliers for nondefense purchases; multipliers in the literature of two or more likely reflect reverse causation from GDP to nondefense purchases. Increases in average marginal income tax rates (measured by a newly constructed time series) have significantly negative effects on GDP. When interpreted as a tax multiplier, the magnitude is around 1.1. The combination of the estimated spending and tax multipliers implies that the balanced-budget multiplier for defense spending is negative. We have some evidence that tax changes affect GDP mainly through substitution effects, rather than wealth effects.