摘要：The management of government debt plays a key role in public finance. But the discussion of it is on the whole driven by political economy considerations. On the one hand, fiscal conservatives regard any government debt as a drain on future resources, and therefore to be avoided. On the other hand, Keynesians tend to dismiss concerns about government borrowing by arguing that the future growth assisted by debt-financed fiscal stimulus will allow the debt to be repaid. The conservative argument may be true of foreign borrowing, and even perhaps of domestic borrowing under a gold standard, but it is certainly not true of domestic borrowing in a credit economy. The Keynesian case, for its part, depends on assumptions about the fiscal multiplier that need to be backed by more than mere assertions that this ratio will be sufficient. Both cases need a more careful analysis of the principles and methods of government debt management and its effect on macroeconomic dynamics: the conservative case to show the resource constraints on government debt in a credit economy, and the Keynesian case to show the effective connections between government debt and the fiscal multiplier. This policy note provides such an analysis of domestic debt financed using fiscal principles derived from the work of Michał Kalecki.
