Idiosyncratic Risk, Government Debt and Inflation

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Author: Hänsel, Matthias
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Hänsel, Matthias
author_facet Hänsel, Matthias
contents How does public debt matter for price stability? If it is useful for the private sector to insure idiosyncratic risk, even transitory government debt expansions can exert upward pressure on interest rates and create inflation. As I demonstrate using an analytically tractable model, this holds in the presence of an active Taylor rule and does not require the absence of future fiscal consolidation. Further analysis using a quantitative 2-asset HANK model reveals the magnitude of the mechanism to crucially depend on the structure of the asset market: under common assumptions, the interest rate effects of public debt are either overly strong or overly weak. After disciplining this aspect based on evidence regarding its long-term relationship with treasury returns, my framework indicates relevant short-run effects of public debt on inflation under active monetary policy: In particular, in the HANK model the mechanism can account for US inflation remaining elevated in 2023 and afterwards.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2403_00471
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Idiosyncratic Risk, Government Debt and Inflation
Hänsel, Matthias
General Economics
Economics
How does public debt matter for price stability? If it is useful for the private sector to insure idiosyncratic risk, even transitory government debt expansions can exert upward pressure on interest rates and create inflation. As I demonstrate using an analytically tractable model, this holds in the presence of an active Taylor rule and does not require the absence of future fiscal consolidation. Further analysis using a quantitative 2-asset HANK model reveals the magnitude of the mechanism to crucially depend on the structure of the asset market: under common assumptions, the interest rate effects of public debt are either overly strong or overly weak. After disciplining this aspect based on evidence regarding its long-term relationship with treasury returns, my framework indicates relevant short-run effects of public debt on inflation under active monetary policy: In particular, in the HANK model the mechanism can account for US inflation remaining elevated in 2023 and afterwards.
title Idiosyncratic Risk, Government Debt and Inflation
topic General Economics
Economics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.00471