Towards a Political-Economic Theory of Domestic Debt

Allan Drazen ()

No 5890, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: A political-economic model of the composition of government debt, that is, whether it is issued to domestic or foreign holders, is presented. The key determinant will be the political constraints on repudiation of foreign and domestic debt, which will determine the nature of the domestic political equilibrium. Economic and political factors determine the effective cost of borrowing at home or abroad, and with the ability to segment markets the government acts like a discriminating monopsonist in placing its debt. A country that expects to face a low effective foreign interest rate, reflecting the expectation that it won't be forced to repay its foreign debts in full, will be characterized by high government spending, a high government budget deficit, low domestic saving and thus a high trade balance deficit so that the domestic economy will look mismanaged in terms of a number of macroeconomic indicators. Very lenient foreign assistance programs would have the same effect.

JEL-codes: F34 H63 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1997-01
Note: IFM
View list of references

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w5890.pdf (application/pdf)
Access to the full text is generally limited to series subscribers, however if the top level domain of the client browser is in a developing country or transition economy free access is provided. More information about subscriptions and free access is available at http://www.nber.org/wwphelp.html.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:5890

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w5890
The price is Paper copy available by mail.

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc
Address: National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.
Contact information at EDIRC.
Series data maintained by ().