On debt neutrality in life-cycle models

A parallelism is established between pure life-cycle models and those in which altruism is one-sided in the discussion of the public debt neutrality. It is argued that when indiduals behave as pure life cyclers, the coercive transfers necessary to offset the effects of the debt have the same nature, and take place under the same conditions, as the voluntary intrafamily bequests and gifts which constitute the usual basis for the 'Ricardian equivalence theorem'. © 1990.