IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bpj/pepspp/v25y2019i1p6n1.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Government Debt and Economic Growth. A Threshold Analysis for Greece

Author

Listed:
  • Pegkas Panagiotis

    (University of Thessaly School of Science, Papasiopoulou 2-4, Lamia 35100, Greece)

Abstract

This study addresses the issue of threshold effects between general government debt and economic growth in Greece over the period 1970–2016. Using threshold models, there is evidence in favour of a negative association between general government debt and economic growth. The results indicate that the magnitude of this negative relationship between debt and growth depends on debt regimes. Also, the results seem to suggest that public debt might be associated with lower growth at low and moderate public debt levels. Specifically, at debt levels lower than 23.5 percent of GDP, increases in the general government debt-to-GDP ratio are associated with higher negative effect on economic growth, than at very high debt levels of 109.4 percent of GDP. The overall results could explain why general government debt was a significant drag on economic growth of Greece and that the crisis is far from over as thresholds are still binding.

Suggested Citation

  • Pegkas Panagiotis, 2019. "Government Debt and Economic Growth. A Threshold Analysis for Greece," Peace Economics, Peace Science, and Public Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 25(1), pages 1-6, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:bpj:pepspp:v:25:y:2019:i:1:p:6:n:1
    DOI: 10.1515/peps-2018-0003
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1515/peps-2018-0003
    Download Restriction: For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1515/peps-2018-0003?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jushan Bai & Pierre Perron, 1998. "Estimating and Testing Linear Models with Multiple Structural Changes," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 66(1), pages 47-78, January.
    2. Balẳ Égert, 2015. "The 90% public debt threshold: the rise and fall of a stylized fact," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 47(34-35), pages 3756-3770, July.
    3. Balázs Égert, 2015. "Public debt, economic growth and nonlinear effects: Myth or reality?," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 226-238.
    4. Carmen M. Reinhart & Kenneth S. Rogoff, 2010. "Growth in a Time of Debt," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(2), pages 573-578, May.
    5. Perron, Pierre, 1997. "Further evidence on breaking trend functions in macroeconomic variables," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 80(2), pages 355-385, October.
    6. Cuestas, Juan Carlos & Gil-Alana, Luis A. & Staehr, Karsten, 2014. "Government debt dynamics and the global financial crisis: Has anything changed in the EA12?," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 124(1), pages 64-66.
    7. Eberhardt, Markus & Presbitero, Andrea F., 2015. "Public debt and growth: Heterogeneity and non-linearity," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 97(1), pages 45-58.
    8. Furceri, Davide & Zdzienicka, Aleksandra, 2012. "How costly are debt crises?," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 31(4), pages 726-742.
    9. Dickey, David A & Fuller, Wayne A, 1981. "Likelihood Ratio Statistics for Autoregressive Time Series with a Unit Root," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 49(4), pages 1057-1072, June.
    10. Nicholas Apergis & Emmanuel Mamatzakis, 2014. "What are the driving factors behind the rise of spreads and CDS of euro-area sovereign bonds? A FAVAR model for Greece and Ireland," International Journal of Economics and Business Research, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd, vol. 7(1), pages 104-120.
    11. Carmen M. Reinhart & Vincent R. Reinhart & Kenneth S. Rogoff, 2012. "Public Debt Overhangs: Advanced-Economy Episodes since 1800," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 26(3), pages 69-86, Summer.
    12. Checherita-Westphal, Cristina & Rother, Philipp, 2012. "The impact of high government debt on economic growth and its channels: An empirical investigation for the euro area," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 56(7), pages 1392-1405.
    13. Legrenzi, Gabriella & Milas, Costas, 2013. "Modelling the fiscal reaction functions of the GIPS based on state-varying thresholds," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 121(3), pages 384-389.
    14. Perron, Pierre, 1989. "The Great Crash, the Oil Price Shock, and the Unit Root Hypothesis," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 57(6), pages 1361-1401, November.
    15. Jushan Bai & Pierre Perron, 2003. "Critical values for multiple structural change tests," Econometrics Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 6(1), pages 72-78, June.
    16. Douglas Sutherland & Peter Hoeller, 2012. "Debt and Macroeconomic Stability: An Overview of the Literature and Some Empirics," OECD Economics Department Working Papers 1006, OECD Publishing.
    17. Friedrich Schneider, 2011. "The Shadow Economy Labour Force," World Economics, World Economics, 1 Ivory Square, Plantation Wharf, London, United Kingdom, SW11 3UE, vol. 12(4), pages 53-92, October.
    18. Bettina Fincke & Alfred Greiner, 2015. "On the relation between public debt and economic growth: an empirical investigation," Economics and Business Letters, Oviedo University Press, vol. 4(4), pages 137-150.
    19. Jushan Bai & Pierre Perron, 2003. "Computation and analysis of multiple structural change models," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 18(1), pages 1-22.
    20. MacKinnon, James G, 1996. "Numerical Distribution Functions for Unit Root and Cointegration Tests," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 11(6), pages 601-618, Nov.-Dec..
    21. Alfred Greiner, 2011. "Sustainability of public debt: Some theoretical considerations," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 31(4), pages 3311-3319.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Abdul Jalil, 2020. "Debt Sustainability: Economic Growth is the Panacea," PIDE Knowledge Brief 2020:19, Pakistan Institute of Development Economics.
    2. Ahmed MAAROUFI & Ghazi BOULILA, 2021. "Non-linear effect of public debt on economic growth: The case of Tunisia," Theoretical and Applied Economics, Asociatia Generala a Economistilor din Romania - AGER, vol. 0(4(629), W), pages 121-134, Winter.
    3. Panagiotis Pegkas & Christos Staikouras & Constantinos Tsamadias, 2020. "On the determinants of economic growth: Empirical evidence from the Eurozone countries," International Area Studies Review, Center for International Area Studies, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, vol. 23(2), pages 210-229, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Panagiotis Pegkas, 2018. "The Effect of Government Debt and Other Determinants on Economic Growth: The Greek Experience," Economies, MDPI, vol. 6(1), pages 1-19, February.
    2. Vicente Esteve & Cecilio Tamarit, 2018. "Public debt and economic growth in Spain, 1851–2013," Cliometrica, Springer;Cliometric Society (Association Francaise de Cliométrie), vol. 12(2), pages 219-249, May.
    3. Marta Gómez-Puig & Simón Sosvilla-Rivero, 2015. "“On the bi-directional causal relationship between public debt and economic growth in EMU countries”," IREA Working Papers 201512, University of Barcelona, Research Institute of Applied Economics, revised May 2015.
    4. Juergen Amann & Paul Middleditch, 2017. "Growth in a time of austerity: evidence from the UK," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 64(4), pages 349-375, September.
    5. Giorgio Canarella & Rangan Gupta & Stephen M. Miller & Stephen K. Pollard, 2019. "Unemployment rate hysteresis and the great recession: exploring the metropolitan evidence," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 56(1), pages 61-79, January.
    6. Arghyrou, Michael G. & Gadea, Maria Dolores, 2012. "The single monetary policy and domestic macro-fundamentals: Evidence from Spain," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 34(1), pages 16-34.
    7. Paniagua, Jordi & Sapena, Juan & Tamarit, Cecilio, 2017. "Fiscal sustainability in EMU countries: A continued fiscal commitment?," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 85-97.
    8. Vicente Esteve, 2004. "Política fiscal y productividad del trabajo en la economía española: un análisis de series temporales," Revista de Analisis Economico – Economic Analysis Review, Universidad Alberto Hurtado/School of Economics and Business, vol. 19(1), pages 3-29, June.
    9. Gómez-Puig, Marta & Sosvilla-Rivero, Simón, 2015. "The causal relationship between debt and growth in EMU countries," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 37(6), pages 974-989.
    10. Séverine MENGUY, 2019. "Does public indebtedness constrain or can it favor economic growth? A simple analytical modeling," Bulletin of Applied Economics, Risk Market Journals, vol. 6(2), pages 1-29.
    11. Devi, P. Indira & Shanmugam, K.R. & Jayasree, M.G., 2012. "Compensating Wages for Occupational Risks of Farm Workers in India," Indian Journal of Agricultural Economics, Indian Society of Agricultural Economics, vol. 67(2), pages 1-12.
    12. Dakpogan, Arnaud & Smit, Eon, 2018. "The effect of electricity losses on GDP in Benin," MPRA Paper 89545, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    13. De Vita, Glauco & Trachanas, Emmanouil & Luo, Yun, 2018. "Revisiting the bi-directional causality between debt and growth: Evidence from linear and nonlinear tests," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 83(C), pages 55-74.
    14. Bitar, Nicholas & Chakrabarti, Avik & Zeaiter, Hussein, 2018. "Were Reinhart and Rogoff right?," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 614-620.
    15. Boetel, Brenda L. & Liu, Donald J., 2008. "Incorporating Structural Changes in Agricultural and Food Price Analysis: An Application to the U.S. Beef and Pork Sectors," Working Papers 44076, University of Minnesota, The Food Industry Center.
    16. Talknice Saungweme & Nicholas M. Odhiambo, 2019. "Does Public Debt Impact Economic Growth in Zambia? An Ardl-Bounds Testing Approach," SPOUDAI Journal of Economics and Business, SPOUDAI Journal of Economics and Business, University of Piraeus, vol. 69(4), pages 53-73, October-D.
    17. Bill Russell & Anindya Banerjee & Issam Malki & Natalia Ponomareva, 2010. "A Multiple Break Panel Approach To Estimating United States Phillips Curves," Dundee Discussion Papers in Economics 232, Economic Studies, University of Dundee.
    18. Caporale, Guglielmo Maria & Kontonikas, Alexandros, 2009. "The Euro and inflation uncertainty in the European Monetary Union," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 28(6), pages 954-971, October.
    19. Vicente Esteve & Francisco Requena, 2006. "A Cointegration Analysis of Car Advertising and Sales Data in the Presence of Structural Change," International Journal of the Economics of Business, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 13(1), pages 111-128.
    20. Khorshed Chowdhury, 2011. "Dynamics, Structural Breaks and the Determinants of the Real Exchange Rate of Australia," Economics Working Papers wp11-11, School of Economics, University of Wollongong, NSW, Australia.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    government debt; economic growth; Greece;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C24 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Truncated and Censored Models; Switching Regression Models; Threshold Regression Models
    • O40 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity - - - General
    • H63 - Public Economics - - National Budget, Deficit, and Debt - - - Debt; Debt Management; Sovereign Debt

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bpj:pepspp:v:25:y:2019:i:1:p:6:n:1. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Peter Golla (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.degruyter.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.