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

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10.1073/pnas.1719687115

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Brief history of US debt limits before 1939

Abstract

Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas

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