Examination of Interest-Growth Differentials and the Risk of Sovereign Insolvency

The objective of this research was to demonstrate the (nonlinear) risks of sovereign insolvency and explore the applicability of stochastic modeling in public debt management, given a structural economic model of stochastic government debt dynamics. A stochastic optimal control model was developed to model public debt dynamics based on the debt accounting identity, where the interest-growth differential obeys a continuous random process. This stochasticity represents both the interest rate risk of public debt and the variability of the growth rate of the nominal Gross Domestic Product combined. The optimal fiscal policy was analyzed in terms of the model parameters. The model was simulated, and results were visualized. The insolvency risk was demonstrated by examining the variance of the optimal process. The model was amended with hidden credit risk premia and fiscal multipliers, which forces the debt dynamics to be nonlinear in the debt ratio. The results, on the other hand, confirm that the volatility of the interest-growth differential is crucial in terms of sovereign solvency and in addition, it demonstrates the large risks stemming from the multiplier effect, which underlines the need for prudent debt management and fiscal policy.

Monetary and Fiscal Policy through a DSGE Lens

This text is designed to bridge the gap between Ph.D. and undergraduate textbooks in Macroeconomics. The text develops a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model of money using a cash-in-advance constraint and endogenous production as in the real business cycle literature. The costs of inflation and optimal monetary policy, the impact of labor and capital taxes and as well as optimal fiscal policy are covered. Many extensions, including new Keynesian liquidity shock models are developed. Both standard analytic methods, such as Lagrangian methods, and computational methods using Matlab and Python, are developed as we construct quantitative models.