IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/imf/imfwpa/1990-022.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Sustainable Plans and Mutual Default

Author

Listed:
  • V. V. Chari
  • Mr. Patrick E. Kehoe

Abstract

This paper presents a model of optimal taxation in which both private agents and the government can default on their debt. We first consider Ramsey equilibria in which the government can precommit to its policies but in which private agents can default. We then consider sustainable equilibria in which both government and private agent decision rules are required to be sequentially rational. We show that when there is sufficiently little discounting and government consumption fluctuates enough, the Ramsey allocations and policies (in which the government never defaults) can be supported by a sustainable equilibrium.

Suggested Citation

  • V. V. Chari & Mr. Patrick E. Kehoe, 1990. "Sustainable Plans and Mutual Default," IMF Working Papers 1990/022, International Monetary Fund.
    • Handle: RePEc:imf:imfwpa:1990/022
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=3045
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Persson, Mats & Persson, Torsten & Svensson, Lars E O, 1987. "Time Consistency of Fiscal and Monetary Policy," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 55(6), pages 1419-1431, November.
    2. Barro, Robert J. & Gordon, David B., 1983. "Rules, discretion and reputation in a model of monetary policy," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 12(1), pages 101-121.
    3. Calvo, Guillermo A, 1978. "On the Time Consistency of Optimal Policy in a Monetary Economy," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 46(6), pages 1411-1428, November.
    4. Bulow, Jeremy & Rogoff, Kenneth, 1989. "Sovereign Debt: Is to Forgive to Forget?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 79(1), pages 43-50, March.
    5. Atkeson, Andrew, 1991. "International Lending with Moral Hazard and Risk of Repudiation," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 59(4), pages 1069-1089, July.
    6. Drew Fudenberg & Eric Maskin, 2008. "The Folk Theorem In Repeated Games With Discounting Or With Incomplete Information," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Drew Fudenberg & David K Levine (ed.), A Long-Run Collaboration On Long-Run Games, chapter 11, pages 209-230, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    7. Chari V. V. & Kehoe Patrick J., 1993. "Sustainable Plans and Debt," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 61(2), pages 230-261, December.
    8. Rotemberg, Julio J & Saloner, Garth, 1986. "A Supergame-Theoretic Model of Price Wars during Booms," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(3), pages 390-407, June.
    9. Drew Fudenberg & David M. Kreps & Eric S. Maskin, 1990. "Repeated Games with Long-run and Short-run Players," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 57(4), pages 555-573.
    10. Prescott, Edward C., 1977. "Should control theory be used for economic stabilization?," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 7(1), pages 13-38, January.
    11. Backus, David & Driffill, John, 1985. "Inflation and Reputation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 75(3), pages 530-538, June.
    12. Jonathan Eaton & Mark Gersovitz & Joseph E. Stiglitz, 1991. "The Pure Theory of Country Risk," NBER Chapters, in: International Volatility and Economic Growth: The First Ten Years of The International Seminar on Macroeconomics, pages 391-435, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Green, Edward J & Porter, Robert H, 1984. "Noncooperative Collusion under Imperfect Price Information," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 52(1), pages 87-100, January.
    14. Brunner, Karl & Meltzer, Allan H., 1977. "Optimal policies, control theory and technology exports," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 7(1), pages 1-11, January.
    15. Abreu, Dilip, 1988. "On the Theory of Infinitely Repeated Games with Discounting," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 56(2), pages 383-396, March.
    16. Julio J. Rotemberg & Garth Saloner, 1984. "A Supergame-Theoretic Model of Business Cycles and Price Wars During Booms," NBER Working Papers 1412, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Lucas, Robert Jr. & Stokey, Nancy L., 1983. "Optimal fiscal and monetary policy in an economy without capital," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 12(1), pages 55-93.
    18. Chari, V V & Kehoe, Patrick J, 1990. "Sustainable Plans," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 98(4), pages 783-802, August.
    19. Martin L. Weitzman, 1973. "Duality Theory for Infinite Horizon Convex Models," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 19(7), pages 783-789, March.
    20. Prescott, Edward C., 1977. "Should control theory be used for economic stabilization?: A rejoinder," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 7(1), pages 101-102, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Chari V. V. & Kehoe Patrick J., 1993. "Sustainable Plans and Debt," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 61(2), pages 230-261, December.
    2. V. V. Chari, 1988. "Time consistency and optimal policy design," Quarterly Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, issue Fall, pages 17-31.
    3. Persson, Torsten & Tabellini, Guido, 1999. "Political economics and macroeconomic policy," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & M. Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 22, pages 1397-1482, Elsevier.
    4. Chari, V V & Kehoe, Patrick J, 1990. "Sustainable Plans," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 98(4), pages 783-802, August.
    5. Chari, V. V. & Christiano, Lawrence J. & Eichenbaum, Martin, 1998. "Expectation Traps and Discretion," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 81(2), pages 462-492, August.
    6. Michael D. Bordo & Finn E. Kydland, 1990. "The Gold Standard as a Rule," NBER Working Papers 3367, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Juan Passadore & Juan Xandri, 2019. "Robust Predictions in Dynamic Policy Games," 2019 Meeting Papers 1345, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    8. R. Cellini & L. Lambertini, 2003. "On the Dynamic Consistency of Optimal Monetary Policy," Working Papers 463, Dipartimento Scienze Economiche, Universita' di Bologna.
    9. David R. Stockman, 2004. "Default, Reputation and Balanced-Budget Rules," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 7(2), pages 382-405, April.
    10. Ramon Marimon & Juan Pablo Nicolini & Pedro Teles, 1997. "Electronic money: the end of inflation?," Discussion Paper / Institute for Empirical Macroeconomics 122, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
    11. Juan‐Pablo Montero & Juan Ignacio Guzman, 2010. "Output‐Expanding Collusion In The Presence Of A Competitive Fringe," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 58(1), pages 106-126, March.
    12. Mats Persson & Torsten Persson & Lars E. O. Svensson, 1998. "Debt, Cash Flow and Inflation Incentives: A Swedish Example," International Economic Association Series, in: Guillermo Calvo & Mervyn King (ed.), The Debt Burden and its Consequences for Monetary Policy, chapter 2, pages 28-66, Palgrave Macmillan.
    13. Eichengreen, Barry, 1989. "The Capital Levy in Theory and Practice," Department of Economics, Working Paper Series qt11j4756b, Department of Economics, Institute for Business and Economic Research, UC Berkeley.
    14. Huiping Yuan & Stephen M. Miller & Langnan Chen, 2011. "The Optimality And Controllability Of Monetary Policy Through Delegation With Consistent Targets," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 58(1), pages 82-106, February.
    15. Labrecciosa Paola & Colombo Luca, 2010. "Technology Uncertainty and Market Collusion," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 10(1), pages 1-17, March.
    16. Maurice Obstfeld, 1989. "Dynamic Seigniorage Theory: An Exploration," NBER Working Papers 2869, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Susan Athey & Andrew Atkeson & Patrick J. Kehoe, 2005. "The Optimal Degree of Discretion in Monetary Policy," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 73(5), pages 1431-1475, September.
    18. Spagnolo, Giancarlo, 2005. "Managerial incentives and collusive behavior," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 49(6), pages 1501-1523, August.
    19. David G. Pearce, 1991. "Repeated Games: Cooperation and Rationality," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 983, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University.
    20. Rose, Andrew K., 2005. "One reason countries pay their debts: renegotiation and international trade," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 77(1), pages 189-206, June.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    WP;

    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:imf:imfwpa:1990/022. 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: Akshay Modi (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/imfffus.html .

    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.