IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/japwor/v23y2011i3p202-213.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Do large industrialized economies pursue sustainable debt policies? A comparative study for Japan, Germany and the United States

Author

Listed:
  • Fincke, Bettina
  • Greiner, Alfred

Abstract

This paper analyzes the public debt situation in Japan, Germany and the United States by reflecting their respective debt history and by analyzing whether the governments pursue a sustainable debt policy. Starting point of the analysis are theoretical considerations about conditions guaranteeing sustainability of public debt. In the empirical estimations we allow for time-varying parameters to take into account changing government policies. The findings allow to conclude that for all selected countries there is evidence of sustainability of public debt although country specific characteristics of public finances need to be considered.

Suggested Citation

  • Fincke, Bettina & Greiner, Alfred, 2011. "Do large industrialized economies pursue sustainable debt policies? A comparative study for Japan, Germany and the United States," Japan and the World Economy, Elsevier, vol. 23(3), pages 202-213.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:japwor:v:23:y:2011:i:3:p:202-213
    DOI: 10.1016/j.japwor.2011.03.002
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0922142511000132
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.japwor.2011.03.002?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Henning Bohn, 1998. "The Behavior of U. S. Public Debt and Deficits," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 113(3), pages 949-963.
    2. Dickey, David A & Fuller, Wayne A, 1981. "Likelihood Ratio Statistics for Autoregressive Time Series with a Unit Root," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 49(4), pages 1057-1072, June.
    3. Ihori, Toshihiro & Doi, Takero & Kondo, Hiroki, 2001. "Japanese fiscal reform: fiscal reconstruction and fiscal policy," Japan and the World Economy, Elsevier, vol. 13(4), pages 351-370, December.
    4. Trehan, Bharat & Walsh, Carl E, 1991. "Testing Intertemporal Budget Constraints: Theory and Applications to U.S. Federal Budget and Current Account Deficits," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 23(2), pages 206-223, May.
    5. Ruppert,David & Wand,M. P. & Carroll,R. J., 2003. "Semiparametric Regression," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521785167, January.
    6. Alfred Greiner & Uwe Köller & Willi Semmler, 2007. "Debt sustainability in the European Monetary Union: Theory and empirical evidence for selected countries," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 59(2), pages 194-218, April.
    7. Granger Clive W.J., 2008. "Non-Linear Models: Where Do We Go Next - Time Varying Parameter Models?," Studies in Nonlinear Dynamics & Econometrics, De Gruyter, vol. 12(3), pages 1-11, September.
    8. Bohn, Henning, 1995. "The Sustainability of Budget Deficits in a Stochastic Economy," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 27(1), pages 257-271, February.
    9. Olivier Jean Blanchard & Stanley Fischer, 1989. "Lectures on Macroeconomics," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262022834, December.
    10. Fernando C. Ballabriga & Carlos Martinez-Mongay, 2005. "Sustainability of EU public finances," European Economy - Economic Papers 2008 - 2015 225, Directorate General Economic and Financial Affairs (DG ECFIN), European Commission.
    11. Yakita, Akira, 2008. "Sustainability of public debt, public capital formation, and endogenous growth in an overlapping generations setting," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(3-4), pages 897-914, April.
    12. Ruppert,David & Wand,M. P. & Carroll,R. J., 2003. "Semiparametric Regression," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521780506, January.
    13. Inyoung Kim & Noah D. Cohen & Raymond J. Carroll, 2003. "Semiparametric Regression Splines in Matched Case-Control Studies," Biometrics, The International Biometric Society, vol. 59(4), pages 1158-1169, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Alfred Greiner, 2015. "Fiscal and Monetary Policy in a Basic Endogenous Growth Model," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 45(2), pages 285-301, February.
    2. Ibrahim Ari & Muammer Koc, 2018. "Sustainable Financing for Sustainable Development: Understanding the Interrelations between Public Investment and Sovereign Debt," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(11), pages 1-25, October.
    3. Paniagua, Jordi & Sapena, Juan & Tamarit, Cecilio, 2017. "Fiscal sustainability in EMU countries: A continued fiscal commitment?," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 85-97.
    4. Burret Heiko T. & Feld Lars P. & Köhler Ekkehard A., 2013. "Sustainability of Public Debt in Germany – Historical Considerations and Time Series Evidence," Journal of Economics and Statistics (Jahrbuecher fuer Nationaloekonomie und Statistik), De Gruyter, vol. 233(3), pages 291-335, June.
    5. Alfred Greiner, 2015. "Public Debt, Productive Public Spending and Endogenous Growth," The Japanese Economic Review, Japanese Economic Association, vol. 66(4), pages 520-535, December.
    6. Lihe Tu & Emanuele Padovani, 2018. "A Research on the Debt Sustainability of China’s Major City Governments in Post-Land Finance Era," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(5), pages 1-21, May.
    7. M. Brachetta & C. Ceci, 2022. "A stochastic control approach to public debt management," Mathematics and Financial Economics, Springer, volume 16, number 5, February.
    8. Bettina Fincke & Alfred Greiner, 2015. "On the relation between public debt and economic growth: an empirical investigation," Economics and Business Letters, Oviedo University Press, vol. 4(4), pages 137-150.
    9. Katia Berti & Eugeniu Colesnic & Cyril Desponts & Stephanie Pamies & Etienne Sail, 2016. "Fiscal Reaction Functions for European Union Countries," European Economy - Discussion Papers 028, Directorate General Economic and Financial Affairs (DG ECFIN), European Commission.
    10. Beqiraj, Elton & Fedeli, Silvia & Forte, Francesco, 2018. "Public debt sustainability: An empirical study on OECD countries," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 238-248.
    11. Neto, David, 2020. "Tracking fiscal discipline. Looking for a PIIGS on the wing," International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 163(C), pages 147-154.
    12. Atsumasa Kondo, 2016. "Sustainability of Public Debt in an AK Model with Complex Tax System," Discussion Papers CRR Discussion Paper Series A: General 21, Shiga University, Faculty of Economics,Center for Risk Research.
    13. Olivier Mesly & David W. Shanafelt & Nicolas Huck, 2021. "Dysfunctional Markets: A Spray of Prey Perspective," Journal of Economic Issues, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 55(3), pages 797-819, July.
    14. Samia Omrane Belguith & Foued Badr Gabsi, 2019. "Public Debt Sustainability in Tunisia: Empirical Evidence Estimating Time-Varying Parameters," Journal of the Knowledge Economy, Springer;Portland International Center for Management of Engineering and Technology (PICMET), vol. 10(2), pages 550-560, June.
    15. Lau, Evan & Moll de Alba, Jaime & Liew, Kim-Hing, 2022. "Debt and economic growth in Asian developing countries," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 599-612.
    16. Evan Lau & Ahmad Zubaidi Baharumshah & Soon, 2013. "The behavior of external debt in Asian countries: evidence based on panel unit root tests," Journal of Business Economics and Management, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 14(sup1), pages 377-394, June.
    17. Matteo Brachetta & Claudia Ceci, 2021. "A Stochastic Control Approach to Public Debt Management," Papers 2107.10491, arXiv.org.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Magulsha George & K. R. Shanmugam, 2022. "Public Debt and External Debt Sustainability among BRICS Countries," Margin: The Journal of Applied Economic Research, National Council of Applied Economic Research, vol. 16(3-4), pages 231-253, August.
    2. Benjamin Owusu & Bettina Bökemeier & Alfred Greiner, 2023. "Assessing nonlinearities and heterogeneity in debt sustainability analysis: a panel spline approach," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 64(3), pages 1315-1346, March.
    3. Bettina Fincke & Alfred Greiner, 2012. "How to assess debt sustainability? Some theory and empirical evidence for selected euro area countries," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 44(28), pages 3717-3724, October.
    4. Greiner, Alfred & Kauermann, Göran, 2008. "Debt policy in euro area countries: Evidence for Germany and Italy using penalized spline smoothing," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 25(6), pages 1144-1154, November.
    5. Sassire Napo, 2022. "Assessing public debt sustainability under COVID‐19 uncertainty: Evidence from Côte d'Ivoire," African Development Review, African Development Bank, vol. 34(S1), pages 141-160, July.
    6. Ibrahim Ari & Muammer Koc, 2018. "Sustainable Financing for Sustainable Development: Understanding the Interrelations between Public Investment and Sovereign Debt," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(11), pages 1-25, October.
    7. Christian Schoder, 2014. "The fundamentals of sovereign debt sustainability: evidence from 15 OECD countries," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 41(2), pages 247-271, May.
    8. Stefan Collignon, 2010. "Fiscal Policy Rules and the Sustainability of Public Debt in Europe," RECON Online Working Papers Series 28, RECON.
    9. Aviral Kumar Tiwari, 2012. "Debt Sustainability in India: Empirical Evidence Estimating Time-Varying Parameters," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 32(2), pages 1133-1141.
    10. Alfred Greiner, 2011. "Sustainability of public debt: Some theoretical considerations," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 31(4), pages 3311-3319.
    11. Gerrit B. Koester & Christoph Priesmeier, 2013. "Does Wagner´s Law Ruin the Sustainability of German Public Finances?," FinanzArchiv: Public Finance Analysis, Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 69(3), pages 256-288, September.
    12. Bettina Bökemeier, 2017. "Fiscal Sustainability: Does EU Membership Change Policy Behavior? Empirical Evidence from Central and Eastern Europe," European Journal of Comparative Economics, Cattaneo University (LIUC), vol. 14(2), pages 161-175, December.
    13. Jakob Korbinian Eberl, 2016. "The Collateral Framework of the Eurosystem and Its Fiscal Implications," ifo Beiträge zur Wirtschaftsforschung, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, number 69.
    14. Semmler, Willi & Greiner, Alfred & Diallo, Bobo & Rezai, Armon & Rajaram, Anand, 2007. "Fiscal policy, public expenditure composition, and growth theory and empirics," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4405, The World Bank.
    15. Alfred Greiner & Uwe Koeller & Willi Semmler, 2005. "Testing Sustainability of German Fiscal Policy. Evidence for the Period 1960 – 2003," CESifo Working Paper Series 1386, CESifo.
    16. P.S. Renjith & K.R. Shanmugam, 2018. "Sustainable Debt Policies of Indian State Governments," Margin: The Journal of Applied Economic Research, National Council of Applied Economic Research, vol. 12(2), pages 224-243, May.
    17. Maria Cornachione Kula, 2019. "The behavior of U.S. States’ debts and deficits," Public Sector Economics, Institute of Public Finance, vol. 43(3), pages 267-289.
    18. Gulasekaran Rajaguru & Safdar Ullah Khan & Habib-Ur Rahman, 2021. "Analysis of Australia’s Fiscal Vulnerability to Crisis," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 14(7), pages 1-13, June.
    19. Stefan Collignon, 2012. "Fiscal Policy Rules And The Sustainability Of Public Debt In Europe," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 53(2), pages 539-567, May.
    20. Giannini, Bianca & Oldani, Chiara, 2022. "Asymmetries in the sustainability of public debt in the EU: The use of swaps," The Journal of Economic Asymmetries, Elsevier, vol. 26(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Public debt; Inter-temporal budget constraint; Penalized spline estimation;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • H63 - Public Economics - - National Budget, Deficit, and Debt - - - Debt; Debt Management; Sovereign Debt
    • E62 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Fiscal Policy; Modern Monetary Theory

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:japwor:v:23:y:2011:i:3:p:202-213. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/505557 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.