In a recent paper Minea and Villieu (2012) present an endogenous growth model with productive public spending and government debt and assert that their model can generate multiple balanced growth paths. We show that their result is non-generic and point out where the error in their analysis is....

In this note we theoretically investigate the question of whether the relationship between public debt and economic growth is characterized by an inverse U-shaped functional form. Starting point of our analysis is the paper by Checherita-Westphal et al. (2012) who present an endogenous growth...

Empirical studies analyzing the effect of climate change on output growth sometimes neglect economic variables. This yields a biased picture of the growth process and does not represent a good approximation of the true data generating process. Thus, the question arises how valid the results are...

Public debt has become a severe problem for a great many economies. While the effects of tax policies on the allocation of resources are readily derived, the mechanisms that make public deficits and debt influence the economy are not so easily understood. This book elaborates on the effects of...

We analyze effects of public debt on economic growth and its dynamics in a basic endogenous growth assuming that the history of debt affects the primary surplus of the government. The economy with a balanced government budget is characterized by a unique balanced growth path and a condition for...

In a recent paper, Minea and Villieu (2009) assert that the 'golden rule of public finance' implies a lower growth rate than the balanced-budget rule. Their contribution is misleading because it is not the 'golden rule of public finance' that generates their result but rather the fact that...