Economics 311:  Government Debt and Deficits

Link to slides

For interest:

• Fiscal sustainability:  A Primer, Cecchetti and Schoenholtz, July 2, 2018  (This is a nice guide to the math.)

• Great balance budgeting game:  Fiscal Ship

• Federal Budget Basics- Brookings Institution, June 1, 2016 

• A 100% debt/GDP ratio means nothing!  (Robert Shiller, Slate, July 21, 2011)

• Greek government bonds are seeing their interest rates jump around

• Thomas Sargent's 2012 Nobel Prize lecture

• Steve Colbert on the Reinhart-Rogoff 90% Debt/GDP theshold (April 23, 2013)

• IMF's Historical Public Debt Database

• Graphs of the history of US government debt levels

• Tax revenues move with the strength of the economy (Slate, July 13, 2010)

• Higher marginal tax rates don't seem to have an observable effect on RGDP growth. (Elliot Spitzer, Slate, Feb. 23, 2010)

• Who is buying all of these US government bonds?  (James Hamilton, July 11, 2010)

• Bugs Bunny selling US Treasury bonds during WWII

• England had trouble selling the debt it needed to finance World War I...and things go interesting, and secretive.  

  • Then things got bad for the English economy.