Suchergebnisse

The controversial findings by Reinhart and Rogoff have continuously generated debates on the threshold of debt towards GDP. Hence, the aim of this study is to examine whether there exists mutual consensus on the effects of public debt on the economic growth of a country or group of economies. A systematic review on related articles from SCOPUS database was conducted by adopting a standard procedure in the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA), namely identification, screening and eligibility. Thirty-three articles were chosen as the main articles to be reviewed. It was found that there is no mutual consensus on the relationship between public debt and economic growth. The relationship can be positive, negative or even non-linear. Besides, the 90% threshold as argued in the Reinhart-Rogoff hypothesis is also not applied across all countries. The findings may help governments and policymakers to design their fiscal policy by investigating how existing debts affect the growth level. Future studies should investigate the effects of public debt on the economic growth in the upper-middle-income economies. These economies were least studied in this context.

A rise in the ageing population is the current demographic challenge which is capable of pressuring the government to borrow more external funds in order to support domestic needs. This study aims to investigate the effects of the external debt of 36 upper-middle-income economies from 2000 to 2017 due to the increase in the ageing population. This study employed the system Generalised Method of Moments (GMM), where it revealed that the ageing population could increase the level of external debt if the population aged 65 and above was used as a proxy to represent the ageing population. However, the results were insignificant when the proxy was changed to the old-age dependency ratio. It illustrated that the increase in external debt occurs due to the increase in the population aged 65 and above because the government has to allocate more funds for healthcare, age-friendly infrastructure, social security and pensions. However, the dependency of the older people on government is minimal because of their long-term savings. Hence, the old-age dependency ratio has an insignificant relationship with the external debt level. For future research, it is suggested that the impact of the ageing population can be investigated on the domestic debt level. First published online 23 December 2020