The Household Fallacy

Roger Farmer and Pawel Zabczyk

No 487, National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) Discussion Papers from National Institute of Economic and Social Research

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 interest rate is always positive.

Keywords: deficit; austerity; government budget (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E0 H62 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dge and nep-mac
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Related works:
Journal Article: The household fallacy (2018)
Working Paper: The Household Fallacy (2018)
Working Paper: The Household Fallacy (2018)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nsr:niesrd:487

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