Brief history of US debt limits before 1939.
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- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 29507220.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1073/pnas.1719687115 and PMC identifier 5866584.
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Abstract
Between 1776 and 1920, the US Congress designed more than 200 distinct securities and stated the maximum amount of each that the Treasury could sell. Between 1917 and 1939, Congress gradually delegated all decisions about designing US debt instruments to the Treasury. In 1939, Congress began imposing a limit on the par value of total federal debt outstanding. By summing Congressional borrowing authorizations outstanding each year for each bond, we construct a time series of implied federal debt limits before 1939.