Bond financed fiscal policy and the problem of instrument instability

Previous analyses of bond financed government expenditure policies have indicated stability problems but have considered only a once-for-all and sustained increase in government spending. In this paper we examine the bond financing of temporary government expenditure changes, which form part of an ongoing policy designed to “balance the budget over the business cycle.” We find that an endogenous fiscal policy can keep national output near its target value but that the effects on the national debt and the size of the public sector are likely not to be transitory. There is a strong tendency toward instrument instability, in that control of the economy forces the level of government spending to forever diverge from its equilibrium value.