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Warm thanks to @NBarreyre & N. Delalande for editing this book with so many contributions from outstanding scholars. I feel even prouder and luckier to have had the chance to write with @MonnetEric on what is at the stake in the accounting of public debt.
[First thread in
] https://twitter.com/NBarreyre/status/1333758374563999746
[First thread in
] https://twitter.com/NBarreyre/status/1333758374563999746
It took much longer to harmonize the accounting of public debt than other key economic variables, making long-term time series on public debt extremely hard to compile. Our main idea is: this is not just a problem to solve but rather an issue to investigate on.
Since the mid-19th century, statistics have encapsulated more or less implicitly varying definitions of public debt and these different conceptions roughly correspond to different debt regimes and historical periods of capitalism.
We particularly identify three main perspectives on public debt accounting (the “financial”, “circuitist” and “benchmarking” views) to unravel both the evolution and the persistence of political issues at stake in public indebtedness.
The financial view is the perspective investors have when they are interested in marketable public debt to assess its risk and its expected rate of return compared to other financial asset. It is obviously prevalent when states mainly depend on market to finance themselves.
With the circuitist view, public debt is a proxy to measure the importance of the state as a financial intermediary. It was a key perspective from the interwar period to the 1970s, when a sizeable chunk of domestic savings was intermediated by the state to finance investment.
The benchmarking view does not come with a definition of public debt as clear as the two others. Its rationale is to standardize and compare statistics of public debt across countries in order to derive policy implications, as international institutions have done since the 1980s.
These perspectives coexist over time, but each of them is more or less prevalent at 1 of the 4 periods covered by the book (1770s-1860s, 1860s-1914, 1914-1970s, 1970s-). Therefore our chapter is first and foremost an incitement to read wonderful pieces written by other authors...
...like: @NBarreyre , @alexia_yates , @dongyan84 , @EtiennePeyrat , @kristy_ironside, @adam_tooze, @malaklabib, @NMaggor, @JFloresZendejas, @RebeccaSpang or @benjlemoine !
Last but important point: if you or your institution does not have a subscription to access the whole book, our chapter should be available soon in open access!
