TY - JOUR AU - Hall, George J AU - Sargent, Thomas J TI - A History of U.S. Debt Limits JF - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series VL - No. 21799 PY - 2015 Y2 - December 2015 DO - 10.3386/w21799 UR - http://www.nber.org/papers/w21799 L1 - http://www.nber.org/papers/w21799.pdf N1 - Author contact info: George J. Hall Department of Economics Brandeis University 415 South Street Waltham, MA 02453 E-Mail: ghall@brandeis.edu Thomas J. Sargent Department of Economics New York University 19 W. 4th Street, 6th Floor New York, NY 10012 Tel: 612/373-4383 Fax: 650/723-1687 E-Mail: thomas.sargent@nyu.edu AB - Congress first imposed an aggregate debt limit in 1939 when it delegated decisions about designing US debt instruments to the Treasury. Before World War I, Congress designed each bond and specified a maximum amount of each bond that the Treasury could issue. It usually specified purposes for which proceeds could be spent. We construct and interpret a Federal debt limit before 1939. ER -