Public debt stabilization: the relevance of policymakers’ time horizons

Giovanni Di Bartolomeo (), Marco Di Pietro (), Enrico Saltari and Willi Semmler

Public Choice, 2018, vol. 177, issue 3, No 6, 287-299

Abstract: Abstract Policymakers are stuck in time. Political short-termism, policy myopia, policy short-sightedness, and similar words have been coined to emphasize the present-centric policy thinking. Politics tends to produce short time horizons, and as a result, policymakers often fail to use present opportunities to mitigate future harms. Focusing on fiscal and monetary strategic interactions, given different separate decision makers, our paper aims to explore the effects of policymakers’ time horizons on debt stabilization. To formalize our ideas, we use the novel concept of Nonlinear-model-predictive-control Feedback Nash Equilibrium (NFNE) and find that present-centric policy thinking and decision horizons matters under several dimensions.

Keywords: Political instability; Bounded rationality; Receding policy horizon; Present-centric policy thinking; Excessive public debts (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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Working Paper: Public debt stabilization: The relevance of policymakers’ time horizons (2017)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:pubcho:v:177:y:2018:i:3:d:10.1007_s11127-018-0584-7

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DOI: 10.1007/s11127-018-0584-7

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