Generationengerechtigkeit als Ordnungsprinzip für die Staatsverschuldung

In the face of large budget deficits, two questions arise in a social market economy: the economic question concerning the intergenerational distribution effects of public debt and the ethical question of how these effects have a bearing on justice between generations: When is public debt intergenerationally just? What makes debt policy intergenerationally just? Taking up these questions, this study designs intergenerational justice as a basic principle that can be adopted to evaluate various debt policy decisions. For this purpose, it determines the intergenerational burden effects of public debt and links them with theories and criteria of intergenerational justice in order to give a proper definition of a principle of intergenerational justice. The author then operationalises the principle and deploys it in a model of overlapping generations in order to explore alternatives for intergenerationally just debt policies.