Unité mixte de recherche 7235

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

Balázs Egert

[en]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.[/en]

AGENDA

mardi 5 décembre 2023

Recherche et Economie et Socioéconomie Politique, des Institutions et des Régulations (RESPIR)

Clément Fontan (UC Louvain)

The ECB and the inflation monsters: strategic framing and the responsibility imperative (1998-2023)

jeudi 7 décembre 2023

Groupe de travail Economie Comportementale

Vincent Lenglin (Université Catholique de Lille)

TBA

jeudi 7 décembre 2023

Doctorants

Emmanuelle Faure

Explaining economic performances in the French employment zone: spatial externalities and related variety

lundi 11 décembre 2023

Law, Institutions and Economics in Nanterre (LIEN)

Bastien Michel (LEMNA, Nantes)

Measuring the Impact of Incarceration on Recidivism in Denmark

mercredi 13 décembre 2023

Économies du monde musulman

Chahir Zaki (LEO, Université d’Orléans)

Dette en Egypte : conjoncture défavorable ou structure vulnérable ?

jeudi 14 décembre 2023

Lunch

Hugo ORIOLA

Salle 101-102 à 12h

Opportunistic Political Central Bank Coverage: Does media coverage of ECB’s Monetary Policy Impacts German Political Parties’ Popularity?

jeudi 14 décembre 2023

Développement Durable Environnement et Energie (DDEE)

Emeline Bezin (CNRS/CREM)

Salle 101-102

TBA

jeudi 14 décembre 2023

Séminaire Econom’IA

Benjamin Ooghe-Tabanou (médialab - Sciences Po Paris)

Salle G614A de 11h à 12h30

Outils, méthodes et productions numériques à partir de données du web au médialab de Sciences Po

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