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In this paper, we seek to improve models of support for taxes, spending and borrowing beyond income, ideology and party identification. We discuss how trust in government and willingness to pay taxes have been measured in research around the globe. We present the notion of attachment as how citizens characterize the quality of their relationship to government. We test our measure of attachment, using well-understood analogies, with a sample of adult residents in the United States. The choice of analogy is a strong predictor of voter support for borrowing. These effects are separate from, and in addition to, commonly employed determinants (income, education, ideology, and party identification) and allow for stronger anti-government sentiments to be captured. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this exploratory article, we aim to open a research agenda for renewed attention to the relationship between the capitalist state and the technology ecosystem. Over the last decade, private technology companies have increasingly become enmeshed with the activities of the state in arenas such as policing, healthcare, and welfare administration. At a time when so many facets of state activity are being infiltrated by technology firms and their products, we ask how we should theorise the relationship between the capitalist state and technology capital? This paper develops one approach to answer this question by aligning the priorities of tech capital with those of the neoliberal state namely, through the disciplining and managing of the relative surplus population. In this arena, we argue, a form of techfare has begun to take shape: a technology-assisted extension and intensification of the disciplinary logics that work to lock the relative surplus population into exploitative market relations and punitive institutions in advanced capitalist countries like the United States. We explore techfare and the disciplining of labour through two avenues: the business of consumer finance vis-à-vis debt and credit instruments, and various forms of tech-enabled strategies of law-enforcement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2007–08 financial crisis exposed and exacerbated the debt pathologies of the West. This paper examines whether the new global debt relations that have been generated by this crisis have transformed global power politics, changing the way in which the global South and the global North interrelate and interact. To do so the paper analyses the G20 advanced and emerging economies, examining a number of key indicators related to debt, indebtedness and financial leverage. This research leads to two main findings. First, the crisis has indeed given rise to new global debt relations. As a result, any reforms in the post-crisis global political economy will take place in an environment that favours the rising powers. Second, the USA maintains its capacity to control the parameters of this new global debt politics and economics, but cannot directly impose the terms of a solution to the existing ‘global/hegemonic imbalances’ on the rising powers. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Because fiscal institutions and arrangements differ widely across US cities, it has until now been very difficult to conduct comparative analysis of spending, revenues, and debt in US cities. This paper describes a new city fiscal dataset, called fiscally standardized cities (FiSCs), that directly addresses the varying roles of municipal governments, counties, school districts, and special districts in the financing of central cities. By taking systematic account of fiscal data for all the major units of government in large cities over a long time period (1977–2012), the FiSC data permit investigation of a wide range of important comparative policy issues for cities. The article describes the methodology used to construct FiSCs, and gives a number of examples to illustrate the potential uses of the FiSC data. For example, it shows how spending comparisons between cities can be fundamentally misleading unless account is taken of the varying roles of overlapping governmental units. It also demonstrates how the FiSC data can be used to benchmark fiscal data for one city against comparable cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that the fundamental cause of the current economic crisis in the U. S. economy was a significant long-term decline in the rate of profit from the 1950s to the 1970s. Capitalists responded to this profitability crisis by attempting to restore their rate of profit by a variety of strategies, including wages and benefit cuts, inflation, speed-up on the job, and globalization. These strategies have largely restored the rate of profit, but have resulted in stagnant real wages for workers for decades. As a result, household indebtedness has increased to unprecedented levels and must be substantially reduced in order to make a sustainable recovery possible. In addition, increasing indebtedness in the financial sector has greatly increased the instability of the financial system, and this financial indebtedness must also be reduced significantly. In the event of another banking crisis, bankrupt banks should be nationalized and operated in the public interest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explain why, given Keynes's General Theory, worries over the size of the government's national debt per se are foolish. It is more important to educate politicians and the public that government fiscal policy should be designed to make sure that aggregate market demand will produce sufficient profits so that entrepreneurs will hire all domestic workers willing and able to work. Empirical evidence is provided to demonstrate the correctness of this concept of fiscal policy of the balancing wheel for full employment effective demand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sovereign debt restructuring played a key role in placing the US federal government on a sound financial footing under its new Constitution in 1789. State governments in the US, like national governments in the euro area, do not have bankruptcy protection. US state governments have not defaulted since the Great Depression, owing to a credible no-bailout policy by the federal government coupled with fiscal rules and an effective signalling of default risk by private markets. At the municipal level in the US, bankruptcy protections apply and recent default experience is very low. With permanent sovereign bailout mechanisms in place in the euro area, sovereign bankruptcy provisions might lessen officially induced moral hazard, allowing market discipline to function more effectively with respect to euro area countries than previously. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Alexander Hamilton was the first US Treasury Secretary from 1789 to 1795. When he started, the federal government was in default. During his tenure, US Treasuries became the ultimate safe asset. He successfully managed expectations, achieved debt service reduction, and stabilized financial panics. He delivered sound public finances and financial stability. In the end, the US possessed a modern financial system able to finance innovation and growth. At a time when Europe is working its way out of the sovereign debt crisis and implementing banking union and financial union, it is worthwhile to search for lessons from early US history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We put the original Reinhart–Rogoff data-set, made public by Herndonet al.(2013), to a formal econometric test to identify public debt thresholds endogenously. We show that the nonlinear relation between debt and growth is not robust. Taken with a pinch of salt, our results suggest, however, that a negative association between central government debt and growth may set in at debt levels as low as 20% of GDP. Further (and greater) thresholds may exist, but their magnitude is uncertain. For general government debt, the threshold is considerably higher at about 50%. Country-specific estimates reveal a large amount of cross-country heterogeneity. For some countries including the United States, a nonlinear negative link can be detected at about 30% of GDP. For others, no nonlinearities can be established. Our results are a formal econometric confirmation that the 90% public debt threshold is not in the Reinhart–Rogoff data. But our results also seem to suggest that public debt be associated with poor economic performance at fairly moderate public debt levels. The absence of threshold effects or low estimated thresholds may not preclude the emergence of further threshold effects, especially as public debt levels are rising to unprecedentedly high levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates whether there are any discernible trends in the US. and Australian commercial real estate public debt markets with the onset of the global financial crisis and the impact of subdued activity in these financing instruments on the commercial real estate market. An interpretive historical approach is used to review commercial mortgage-backed securities and unsecured bonds issued by real estate investment trusts for the period 2000 to 2009:Q3. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The COVID-19 pandemic has amplified longstanding concerns about mounting levels of corporate debt in the United States. This article places the current conjuncture in its historical context, analysing corporate indebtedness against the backdrop of increasing corporate concentration. Theorising leverage as a form of power, we find that the leverage of large non-financial firms increased in recent decades, while their debt servicing burdens decreased. At the same time, smaller firms experienced sharp deleveraging alongside increasing debt servicing costs. Crucially, smaller corporations also registered severe losses over this period, while large corporations remained profitable, and in fact doubled their net profit margins from the early-1990s to the present. Taken together, the results from our mapping exercise uncover a series of dramatic changes in the financial fortunes of large versus smaller firms in recent decades, a phenomenon we refer to as the great debt divergence. We explain this divergence with reference to the dynamics of power in the era of 'shareholder capitalism', and we argue that the US political economy in the post-COVID 19 world is likely to resemble the pre-COVID 19 one, only with more market turmoil, more concentration, more inequality, and even less investment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of Granger causality is applied to assess the validity of the Ricardian Equivalence Hypothesis. The analysis is conducted using a multivariate approach with a US data set consisting of annual observations for the 1919-1981 period. The empirical evidence generated by this investigation does not support the strict debt neutrality position.
This paper continues the empirical investigation of the government debt as net wealth issue. However, rather than estimating an aggregate consumption function, the analysis focuses upon determining the causal relationship between government debt and economic activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Verifies the transfer of income implied by the payment of interest on the public debt in the U.S. Transfer of interest to households indirectly due to financial intermediation of the national debt; Focus on the distribution of interest in 1982 due to limitations imposed by the availability of data on household balance sheets; Allocation of interest on the national debt in three steps.

Investigates the impact of government deficits on the economic stability in the U.S. Use of complete macroeconomic model of the economy; Government deficits relative to gross national product; Aggregate consumption function; Adaptation of IS-LM model with dynamic features.

Focuses on the effect of federal debt on stock prices in the U.S. Existence of fiscal policy/stock market relationship; Use of multivariate Granger causality test; Stock price equation; Use of actual values of the government debt.

There is a great deal of interest in how government deficits affect macroeconomic variables. Accordingly, there is a large body of theoretical and empirical work on the topic. This paper examines the relationship between deficits and interest rates. Among the difficulties in exploring this relationship is that when conducting monetary policy, the Federal Reserve often targets interest rates. Such a policy can cloud any relationship between deficits and interest rates. A way to avoid this problem (among others) is to estimate money demand functions that contain a measure of the market value of government debt. No evidence is found to support a positive relationship between government debt and money demand. This finding implies budget deficits do not affect interest rates through money demand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Financial literacy is ideally suited to be integrated into mathematics courses and taught in an interdisciplinary manner. Students learn best and are motivated when tackling real-world meaningful questions. This article shares how elementary mathematics was applied to better understand the debate about raising the minimum wage and the United States National Debt. To serve as a guide for other teachers who wish to incorporate financial literacy into their mathematics courses and take an interdisciplinary approach, this article suggests readings, data sets, and pedagogical practices. Students were engaged and enthusiastic to work on problems that challenged their thinking about financial issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We demonstrate that even though during WWII the interest rate was close to zero supporting the financing of the military effort, dissent inside the FOMC occurred with a similar frequency to other policy episodes. Our analysis highlights that the debates which resulted in dissents turned around two broad issues: the size of the Fed's balance sheet as well as the functioning of and communication with financial markets. Thus, we argue that the conventional view depicting the Fed as merely accommodating treasury needs should be revised. Our detailed investigation of dissents emphasises the modernity of the objections raised by Fed officials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

State and local debt in the United States more than doubled as a share of gross domestic product between 1953 and 2007. Using a historical accounting framework, we find that there is no straightforward relationship over time between state and local deficits and debt growth. We find that only 17 percent of the variation in aggregate state-local debt ratios comes from variation in the fiscal balance. This is especially true in the 1980s, the period of most rapid increase in state-local debt ratios. Before 1980, there were small but persistent deficits, but stable debt ratios. In the 1980s, state and local sectors shifted toward budget surpluses but saw rising debt ratios. This is explained by a faster pace of asset accumulation. Our results demonstrate the autonomy of balance sheet variables and suggest that changing debt ratios cannot be explained by real income and expenditure flows. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Persistently low natural real interest rates are a problem for monetary policy and financial stability. I analyse to what extent a permanent increase in government debt that is financed by higher taxes could raise the long-run natural real interest rate. As a measurement tool, I use an incomplete markets model with capital and government bonds. Increasing the public debt/GDP ratio by one percentage point raises the real interest rate by between 0.4 and 1.5 basis points, depending on the degree of inequality generated by the model and the tax instrument used to balance the government's budget constraint. I also show that the interest rate effect of a change in public debt/GDP predicted by the model is significantly smaller than its empirical counterpart for the US, due to the fact that the model understates the empirical fraction of households that are constrained in their consumption decision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Is there another way? The congressional budgets of recent years, many economists argue, have had limited economic growth. The progressive caucus in Congress has produced an alternative that calls for serious fiscal stimulus and not long-run public investment later. This economist, a staff member of the Economic Policy Institute, which helped put the budget together, explains its benefits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fearmongering about America's imminent demise due to high levels of debt has badly misled the nation. It keeps the nation from investing in itself and adequately pushing the economy up to its full growth potential. The author offers a needed counteranalysis to the argument. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Regulations restricting investment by pension funds in high-risk and foreign assets may quarantine member accounts from contagious transmissions during financial crises. We analyze contagion from U.S. equity markets to emerging market autarchic assets (Colombian private pension funds) during the recent financial crises. We test for volatility contagion between financial asset returns using a multivariate GARCH (M-GARCH) framework, where the S&P 500 is the source of contagion to the autarchic asset. We find no evidence of volatility contagion during the 2007-9 crises, indicating protection due to regulated portfolio restrictions. However, there is evidence of contagion during the recent sovereign debt crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article uses survival analysis to investigate fiscal distress in U.S. municipalities. We hypothesize that fiscal distress is positively correlated with revenue concentration and debt usage, and negatively correlated with administrative costs and entity resources. We develop a model that can predict the likelihood of fiscal distress and correctly classify up to 86 percent of the sampled governments. The model enables users to analyze the impact of a change in the risk factors. Fiscal distress can be reduced most effectively by increasing tax revenues as a percent of total revenues or decreasing total debt as a percent of total revenues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study of all fifty state, high school social studies curriculum standards found a lack of attention in the vast majority of state standards to the federal budget, federal debt, and budget deficit, topics of significant concern. These concepts are important to teaching about economics in the United States since they lie at the center of contemporary debates about the health of the nation's economy and its long-term viability. Our research discovered broad variation among states in the degree of specificity about teaching these economic concepts. We discuss specific ways in which some of the economic concepts found in state social studies standards might be used to infuse content about federal budget, federal debt, and budget deficit into high school social studies courses, critical topics in light of contemporary debates about the future of American entitlement programs and the federal government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sometimes we have to step back and clearly state, in the plainest language, the problems we now face and the many myths about the economy. This economist does just that. But he also has come up with an important phrase. What America now needs is a "smart deficit." Maybe the language will catch on. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An important aim of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) was to reduce the cost of capital by enhancing auditor independence. However, prior literature has argued that SOX has been ineffective in meeting this objective. We contribute to this debate by first providing evidence suggesting that auditor independence has increased following SOX. Though we posit an inverse relationship between auditor independence and cost of capital, it is an open question whether this relationship has become stronger or weaker following SOX. An examination of this relationship reveals that auditor independence is more strongly related to bond rating and bond yield premium in the post-SOX period relative to the period before SOX. This evidence suggests greater price sensitivity of corporate debt to the level of auditor independence following SOX. We also show that controlling for the effect of auditor independence and other factors, cost of debt decreased following SOX. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given the enormous risks in the economic outlook we asked a highly regarded macroeconomist and econometrician to present his view and survey of possible outcomes and also his policy prescriptions. He believes that serious fiscal stimulus is necessary but also finds that the resulting deficits may extract a significant future price. Nothing is certain in this unprecedented and complex environment, but Sinai presents a comprehensive and organized view of how we got here and of potential future events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Three analysts discuss the major economic issues the nation now faces, given George W. Bush's electoral victory last fall. The problems are many, but three stand out: debt, deficits, and the dollar. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Responds to comments made on the authors' article 'An Examination of Current Inflation and Deficit Spending.' Quantity theory of money equation in the U.S.; Federal deficits in the face of monetary growth; Annual changes in gross national product deflector; Increase in amounts of Federal Reserve-held government debts.

Comments on authors Phillip E. Griffin, James H. Macomber and Robert E. Berry's article 'An Empirical Examination of Current Inflation and Deficit Spending.' Debt monetization explanation of inflation in the U.S.; Correlation between federal debt and prices; U.S. Federal Reserve holdings of government securities and prices.

The author discusses financial panic, economic threat, and sovereign debt crises in the U.S. He states that the financial panic and crises in the U.S. have passed compared to the economy of Europe, mentioning that recessions also heal. He explores the economic recovery of the U.S., in which he adds that the pushing inflationary expectations can no longer be the priority.