Age gap in voter turnout and size of government debt

We consider a cross-country difference in age gap in voter turnout and its impact on fiscal policy making in a multi-country, overlapping-generations model. We present the conflict over fiscal policy between successive generations (i.e., the young and elderly). We show that a higher turnout of the elderly in voting may have a non-monotonic effect on the size of government debt, depending on voters’ inter-temporal elasticity of substitution of public expenditure.