Faculty of Management, Economics and Social Sciences, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany.
Faculty of Economics and Management, University of Magdeburg, Magdeburg, Germany.
PLoS One. 2018 Aug 28;13(8):e0202963. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0202963. eCollection 2018.
In controlled laboratory experiments with and without overlapping generations, we study the role of intergenerational altruism in public debt accumulation. Public debt is chosen by popular vote, pays for public goods, and is repaid with general taxes. We use an optimal control model to derive a theoretical benchmark. With a single generation, public debt is accumulated prudently. With multiple and over-lapping generations, the burden of debt and the risk of over-indebtedness are shifted to future generations. We find a weak but significant sign of intergenerational altruism, observing that the revealed debt preferences increase as the number of following generations decreases. However, we find considerably fewer intergenerational fairness concerns than one would expect on the basis of the behavioral and experimental literature. Instead, political debt cycles that vary with voters' age emerge. Debt ceiling mechanisms fail to encourage intergenerational altruism and do not mitigate the problem of burden shifting.
在有无世代重叠的受控实验室实验中，我们研究了代际利他主义在公共债务积累中的作用。公共债务由民众投票决定，用于支付公共产品，并通过一般税收偿还。我们使用最优控制模型得出了一个理论基准。在单一代中，公共债务被谨慎地积累。在多代和重叠的情况下，债务负担和过度负债的风险被转移给后代。我们发现了代际利他主义的微弱但显著的迹象，观察到随着后续世代数量的减少，揭示的债务偏好会增加。然而，与行为和实验文献所预期的相比，我们发现代际公平问题要少得多。相反，随着选民年龄的变化，出现了政治债务周期。债务上限机制未能鼓励代际利他主义，也未能缓解负担转移的问题。
