Interest Costs and the Optimal Maturity Structure Of Government Debt
研究政府在平衡税收平滑与利息成本时如何选择最优债务组合，发现借长投短能带来接近完全市场的福利收益，即使存在杠杆约束也有效。
The government faces a trade-off between the benefits of tax smoothing and an associated increase in expected interest costs when choosing its optimal debt portfolio. The article solves for optimal policies in an incomplete markets model where the government uses two debt instruments, long-term and short-term non-contingent, nominal bonds. In this setup the basic prescription is to borrow long and invest short even though equilibrium expected interest costs are higher on long-term debt. The resulting welfare gains are close to what the government could achieve with complete markets. Significant welfare gains are possible even in the presence of leverage constraints. Copyright © 2008 The Author(s).