Skip to main content

Debt and Growth: Empirical Evidence

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Public Debt, Sustainability and Economic Growth
  • 1807 Accesses

Abstract

In the last chapters, we have analyzed endogenous growth models assuming that the government sticks to the intertemporal budget constraint and seen how different debt policies affect economic growth and welfare. In this chapter, we intend to contribute to the empirical research studying the relation between debt and economic growth where we proceed as in Fincke and Greiner (2013).

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 99.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 129.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 119.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    See also the critique in Herndon et al. (2014).

  2. 2.

    Earlier studies using time series data for the USA find a growth maximizing debt to GDP ratio of about 40–50 %, cf. Smyth and Hsing (1995) and the literature cited in that paper.

  3. 3.

    However, within a theoretical endogenous growth model, one needs extreme assumptions to get an inverse U-shaped relation between debt and growth (cf. Greiner 2013d).

  4. 4.

    For the data see OECD (2013) and IMF (2013). The figures and the estimations have been performed using R 2.5.0., except when a newer version was necessary to implement a certain package.

  5. 5.

    For a short introduction to the method, see Kauermann (2006) or Greiner (2009) for instance.

Data Sources

  • IMF. (2013). International financial statistics, via StatistikNetz.de, DSI data service and information.

    Google Scholar 

  • OECD Databases. (2013). “Economic outlook statistics and projections” also “fiscal positions and business cylcles (historical ed.),” via StatistikNetz.de, DSI data service and information.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ballasone, F., Francese, M., & Pace, A. (2011, October). Public debt and economic growth in Italy (Quaderni di Storia Economica/Economic History Working Papers No. 11). Rome: Banca d’Italia.

    Google Scholar 

  • Caner, M., Grennes, T., & Koehler-Geib, F. (2010). Finding the tipping point – When sovereign debt turns bad (Policy Research Working Paper 5391). The World Bank.

    Google Scholar 

  • Checherita, C., & Rother, P. (2010). The impact of high and growing debt on economic growth. An empirical investigation for the euro area (ECB Working Paper Series No. 1237).

    Google Scholar 

  • Checherita-Westphal, C., Hallett, A. H., & Rother, P. (2012). Fiscal sustainability using growth-maximising debt targets (ECB Working Paper Series No. 1472).

    Google Scholar 

  • Croissant, Y., & Millo, G. (2008). Panel data econometrics in R: The plm package. Journal of Statistical Software, 27(2), 1–43. http://www.jstatsoft.org/

  • Dreger, C., & Reimers, H.-E. (2013). Does euro area membership affect the relation between GDP growth and public debt? Journal of Macroeconomics. Available online August 22, 2013 and DIW Discussion Paper 1249, 2012.

    Google Scholar 

  • Eberhardt, M., & Presbitero, A. F. (2013). This time they’re different: Heterogeneity and nonlinearity in the relationship between debt and growth (Centre for Finance, Credit and Macroeconomics, Working Paper 13/10). Nottingham.

    Google Scholar 

  • Egert, B. (2012). Public debt, economic growth and nonlinear effects: Myth or reality? (OECD Economics Department Working Papers 993). OECD Publishing.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ferreira, C. (2009). Public debt and economic growth: A granger causality panel data approach (Working Paper 24/2009). School of Economics and Management, Technical University of Lisbon.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fincke, B., & Greiner, A. (2013). On the relation between public debt and economic growth: An empirical investigation (Bielefeld Working Papers in Economics and Management No. 24–2013). Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2362788

  • Fox, C., Weisberg, S., Adler, D., Bates, D., Baud-Bovy, G., Ellison, S., Firth, D., Friendly, M., Gorjanc, G., Graves, S., Heiberger, R., Laboissiere, R., Monette, G., Murdoch, D., Nilsson, H., Ogle, D., Ripley, B., Venables, W., Zeileis, A., & R-Core. (2013). Package ‘car’. Last access on November 6, 2013, http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/car/car.pdf

  • Greiner, A. (2009). Estimating penalized spline regressions: Theory and applications to economics. Applied Economics Letter, 16, 1831–1835.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Greiner, A. (2013d). Debt and growth: Is there a non-monotonic relation? Economics Bulletin, 33, 340–347.

    Google Scholar 

  • Herndon, T., Ash, M., & Pollin, R. (2014). Does high public debt consistently stifle economic growth? A critique of Reinhart and Rogoff. Cambridge Journal of Economics, 38, 257–279.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kauermann, G. (2006). Nonparametric models and their estimation. Allgemeines Statistisches Archiv, 90(1), 137–152.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kleiber, C., & Zeileis, A. (2008). Applied econometrics with R. Use R! New York: Springer.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kumar, M. S., & Woo, J. (2010). Public debt and growth (IMF Working Paper No. WP/10/174).

    Google Scholar 

  • Panizza, U., & Presbitero, A. F. (2013). Public debt and economic growth in advanced economies: A survey. Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics, 149, 175–204.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pescatori, A., Sandri, D., Simon, J. (2014). Debt and growth: Is there a magic threshold? (IMF Working Paper No. WP/14/34).

    Google Scholar 

  • Reinhart, C. M., & Rogoff, K. S. (2010). Growth in a time of debt (NBER Working Paper No. 15639).

    Google Scholar 

  • Smyth, D. J., & Hsing, Y. (1995). In search of an optimal debt ratio for economic growth. Contemporary Economic Policy, 13, 51–59.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2015 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Greiner, A., Fincke, B. (2015). Debt and Growth: Empirical Evidence. In: Public Debt, Sustainability and Economic Growth. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09348-2_6

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics