Public debt rule breaking by time-inconsistent voters

This study considers how present-biased preferences influence public debt policy when a violation of debt rules is possible. To address this issue, the study extends the framework of Bisin, Lizzeri, and Yariv (American Economic Review 105, (2015), 1711–1737) by allowing for rule breaking with extra costs, and we show that rule breaking occurs when a country exhibits a strong present bias. We further extend the model by introducing a political process for determining the debt rule, and we show that a polarization of debt rules emerges between countries with high and low degrees of present bias