Government Debt Management

Alberto Giovannini

Oxford Review of Economic Policy, 1997, vol. 13, issue 4, 43-52

Abstract: This paper discusses the principles that justify activism of governments in the management of public debt. It starts from a review of the economics literature, which has produced, especially in recent years, a number of important propositions on the desirability of government interventionism, either for the purpose of filling information gaps or to help solve dynamic inconsistency problems. It then considers a number of practical arguments for government activism, stemming from the development of capital markets, and the need to keep up with them. The paper argues that government activism in debt management is much less warranted than the current economic literature or market practices might lead us to believe. The fundamental reason is that governments are not a private actor in the market, and so their optimization problem is radically different from that of other market participants. Copyright 1997 by Oxford University Press.

Date: 1997
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

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: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:oxford:v:13:y:1997:i:4:p:43-52

Access Statistics for this article

Oxford Review of Economic Policy is currently edited by Christopher Adam

More articles in Oxford Review of Economic Policy from Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().