Policy Briefs

P. C. Padoan: Debt Sustainability in the Global Governance Crisis

The sequence and interplay of the various crises that the global system has been experiencing for several years imply that, in the years ahead, it will be necessary to issue substantial amounts of public and private debt to address the new challenges arising from these crises.


Consider the crises at stake: the climate crisis and the need to support the green transition; the technological crisis, whose speed and scope simultaneously accelerate obsolescence and create new profit opportunities; the energy crisis driven by geopolitical conflicts; the industrial crisis exacerbated by the aggressive unilateral trade policies of the U.S. administration; and, of course, ongoing wars.


As a result of these crises, the global system is undergoing a phase of fragmentation that constrains productivity and output growth. At the same time, each of these crises requires massive investments to sustain the reallocation of capital in its various forms: technological, human, physical, and intangible.


The figures for potential funding needs vary depending on objectives, time horizon, and geographical scope, but in any case, the magnitude approaches several hundreds of billions of euros annually.


This raises a pressing question: will this debt be sustainable?

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