Brief history of US debt limits before 1939

George J. Hall; Thomas J. Sargent

doi:10.1073/pnas.1719687115

Brief history of US debt limits before 1939

George J. Hall, Thomas J. Sargent

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

Between 1776 and 1920, the US Congress designed more than 200 distinct securities and stated the maximum amount of each that the Treasury could sell. Between 1917 and 1939, Congress gradually delegated all decisions about designing US debt instruments to the Treasury. In 1939, Congress began imposing a limit on the par value of total federal debt outstanding. By summing Congressional borrowing authorizations outstanding each year for each bond, we construct a time series of implied federal debt limits before 1939.

Original language	English (US)
Pages (from-to)	2942-2945
Number of pages	4
Journal	Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
Volume	115
Issue number	12
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1719687115
State	Published - Mar 20 2018

Keywords

Debt ceiling
Debt management
Fiscal policy

ASJC Scopus subject areas

General

Access to Document

10.1073/pnas.1719687115

Cite this

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title = "Brief history of US debt limits before 1939",

abstract = "Between 1776 and 1920, the US Congress designed more than 200 distinct securities and stated the maximum amount of each that the Treasury could sell. Between 1917 and 1939, Congress gradually delegated all decisions about designing US debt instruments to the Treasury. In 1939, Congress began imposing a limit on the par value of total federal debt outstanding. By summing Congressional borrowing authorizations outstanding each year for each bond, we construct a time series of implied federal debt limits before 1939.",

keywords = "Debt ceiling, Debt management, Fiscal policy",

author = "Hall, {George J.} and Sargent, {Thomas J.}",

note = "Funding Information: ACKNOWLEDGMENTS. We thank Andrew Abel, Mark Aguiar, Andrew Atkeson, James Alt, Marco Bassetto, Michael Bordo, Randall Calvert, Jeffry Frieden, Lee Ohanian, Ricardo Reis, Hugh Rockoff, and Jesus Fernandez-Villaverde for helpful suggestions. We thank Yuval Yossefy for research assistance and Andrew Young at the US Department of Treasury Library for helping to track down government documents. We thank William Berkley, Don Wilson, the Becker–Friedman Institute of the University of Chicago, and National Science Foundation Grant SES-0417519 for financial support.",

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