Public Capital, Sustainable Debt and Endogenous Growth

Abstract

In this paper we analyze an endogenous growth model with public capital and public debt where we posit that the primary surplus of the government is a positive function of cumulated past debt with an exponentially declining weight put on debt further back in time. We consider two scenarios: First, we study the model assuming that the government runs a balanced budget and, then, we compare the outcome to that of the model with permanent deficits. We analyze growth effects of the two scenarios and we study how fiscal policy of the government affects the dynamics of the model economy. We can show that the debt policy of the government crucially determines the dynamics of the model economy and that for a certain range of parameters endogenous growth cycles may occur.

Keywords: Inter-temporal Budget Constraint, Public Capital, Endogenous Growth, Dynamics, Hopf Bifurcation

JEL Classification: E62, H60, H54