Growth via External Public Debt and Capital Controls.

This paper analyzes strategies for economic growth in a small, open, overlapping-generations economy that has access to perfect international capital markets and is characterized in autarky by multiple, locally stable, stationary equilibria. The study designs a growth scheme consisting of external public debt and controls on private capital outflows. This policy permits the economy to move from a low to a high output stationary equilibrium. The policy may be Pareto welfare improving if it is gradualistic and if the economy's rate of convergence to the better equilibrium is faster than the rate of debt accumulation. Copyright 1992 by Economics Department of the University of Pennsylvania and the Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association.