The COVID-19 crisis and massive public debts: What should we expect?

• Published in: Critical perspectives on accounting 2024-01, Vol.98, p.102417, Article 102417
• Main Authors: Gilbert, Christine, Guénin, Henri
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: COVID-19; Government accounting; Neoliberalism; Public debt
• ISSN: 1045-2354; 1095-9955; 1045-2354
• DOI: 10.1016/j.cpa.2022.102417

As our lives were suddenly transformed with the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, governments had to act quickly to protect their populations, both in terms of health and economy. While we have seen states massively support civil society through social measures, one wonders what legacy this will leave, especially concerning the current dominant ideology of neoliberalism. In this essay, we want to contribute to this reflection by focusing on the phenomenon of public debts, since they are reaching record levels because of the COVID-19 crisis. We argue that massive public debts are, in fact, central and vital to neoliberalism and that state interventions (and central bank use of quantitative easing) that we have witnessed recently are in accordance with usual neoliberal practices and thus do not necessarily constitute a departure from the latter. We propose avenues of research to better understand public debt as a mechanism for redistributing wealth from the bottom to the top, which has thus far been understudied in the critical accounting literature, while opening avenues for political action related to the subject of this essay.