A History of U.S. Debt Limits

We thank William Berkley, Don Wilson and the Becker-Friedman Institute of the University of Chicago, and the National Science Foundation (SES-0417519) for financial support. We thank Andrew Abel, Andrew Atkseson, James Alt, Marco Bassetto, Michael Bordo, Randall Calvert, Jeffrey Frieden, and Hugh Rockoff for helpful conversations. We thank Yuval Yossefy for outstanding research assistance and Andrew Young at the U.S. Department of Treasury Library for helping us track down numerous government documents. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.