by Summary:
My new working paper, joint with Pawel Zabczyk, is out now as an NBER working paper, a CEPR discussion paper and a NIESR discussion paper. Here is the abstract:We refer to the idea that government must ‘tighten its belt’ as a necessary policy response to higher indebtedness as the household fallacy. We provide a reason to be skeptical of this claim that holds even if the economy always operates at full employment and all markets clear. Our argument rests on the fact that, in an overlapping-generations (OLG) model, changes in government debt cause changes in the real interest rate that redistribute the burden of repayment across generations. We do not rely on the assumption that the equilibrium is dynamically inefficient, and our argument holds in a version of the OLG model where the real
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Mike Norman considers the following as important: household fallacy
This could be interesting, too:
My new working paper, joint with Pawel Zabczyk, is out now as an NBER working paper, a CEPR discussion paper and a NIESR discussion paper. Here is the abstract:We refer to the idea that government must ‘tighten its belt’ as a necessary policy response to higher indebtedness as the household fallacy. We provide a reason to be skeptical of this claim that holds even if the economy always operates at full employment and all markets clear. Our argument rests on the fact that, in an overlapping-generations (OLG) model, changes in government debt cause changes in the real interest rate that redistribute the burden of repayment across generations. We do not rely on the assumption that the equilibrium is dynamically inefficient, and our argument holds in a version of the OLG model where the real
Topics:
Mike Norman considers the following as important: household fallacy
This could be interesting, too:
Mike Norman writes Chris Dillow — The persistence of fiscal stupidity
My new working paper, joint with Pawel Zabczyk, is out now as an NBER working paper, a CEPR discussion paper and a NIESR discussion paper. Here is the abstract:When I saw the title I thought he got it. Not!
We refer to the idea that government must ‘tighten its belt’ as a necessary policy response to higher indebtedness as the household fallacy. We provide a reason to be skeptical of this claim that holds even if the economy always operates at full employment and all markets clear. Our argument rests on the fact that, in an overlapping-generations (OLG) model, changes in government debt cause changes in the real interest rate that redistribute the burden of repayment across generations. We do not rely on the assumption that the equilibrium is dynamically inefficient, and our argument holds in a version of the OLG model where the real interest rate is always positive....
The real household fallacy is equating the currency issuer with users of the currency.
Roger Farmer's Economic Window
The Household Fallacy
Roger Farmer | Distinguished Professor of Economics at UCLA