In a dynamically efficienct economy, can a government roll its debt forever and avoid the need to raise taxes? In a series of examples of production economies with zero growth, this paper shows that such Ponzi games may be infeasible even when the average rate of return on bonds is negative, and...

Can governments roll their debt over forever in dynamically efficient economies, and thus avoid the need to raise taxes? While the answer is a clear no under certainty, it depends, under uncertainty, on whether public debt provides intergenerational insurance. When it does not, rollover is not...

The purpose of this lecture is to look beyond the complex events that characterize the global financial and economic crisis, identify the basic mechanisms, and infer the policies needed to resolve the current crisis, as well as the policies needed to reduce the probability of similar events in...