Public debt, economic growth and nonlinear effects: Myth or reality?

No 2012-44, EconomiX Working Papers from University of Paris Nanterre, EconomiX

Abstract: The economics profession seems to increasingly endorse the existence of a strongly negative nonlinear effect of public debt on economic growth. Reinhart and Rogoff (2010) were the first to point out that a public debt-to-GDP ratio higher than 90% of GDP is associated with considerably lower economic performance in advanced and emerging economies alike. A string of recent empirical papers broadly validates this threshold value. This paper seeks to contribute to this literature by putting a variant of the Reinhart-Rogoff dataset to a formal econometric testing. Using nonlinear threshold models, there is some evidence in favour of a negative nonlinear relationship between debt and growth. But these results are very sensitive to the time dimension and country coverage considered, data frequency (annual data vs. multi-year averages) and assumptions on the minimum number of observations required in each nonlinear regime. In addition, we also show that nonlinear effects can kick in at much lower levels of public debt (between 20% and 60% of GDP). These results, based on bivariate regressions on secular time series, are largely confirmed on a shorter dataset (1960-2010) when using a multivariate growth framework that accounts for traditional drivers of long-term economic growth and model uncertainty. Nonlinear effects might be more complex and difficult to model than previously thought. Instability might be a result of nonlinear effects changing over time, across countries and economic conditions. Further research is certainly needed to fully understand the link between public debt and growth.

Keywords: Public debt; economic growth; nonlinearity; threshold effects (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E6 F3 F4 N4 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 29 pages
Date: 2012
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-fdg, nep-mac and nep-pbe
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://economix.fr/pdf/dt/2012/WP_EcoX_2012-44.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Public debt, economic growth and nonlinear effects: Myth or reality? (2015)
Working Paper: Public debt, economic growth and nonlinear effects: Myth or reality? (2015)
Working Paper: Public Debt, Economic Growth and Nonlinear Effects: Myth or Reality (2013)
Working Paper: Public debt, economic growth and nonlinear effects: Myth or reality? (2013)
Working Paper: Public debt, economic growth and nonlinear effects: Myth or reality? (2012)
Working Paper: Public Debt, Economic Growth and Nonlinear Effects: Myth or Reality? (2012)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:drm:wpaper:2012-44

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in EconomiX Working Papers from University of Paris Nanterre, EconomiX Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Valerie Mignon ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).