Assessing the Twin and Triple Deficit Hypotheses in Developing Economies: A Panel Causality Analysis

Twin deficit hypothesis, regarding Keynesian and Ricardian perspective, introducing of the linkage between budget deficit and current account deficit is broadly investigated. The literature on triple deficits which advance twin deficit hypothesis by associating savings and fixed investments is limited. The aim of this chapter is to explore whether the twin and triple deficit hypotheses are valid in developing economies. To this end, the twin and triple deficit hypotheses are examined by testing Dumitrescu and Hurlin (Economic Modelling 29(4): 1450–1460, 2012) panel causality approach for 15 developing country economies. The Czech Republic, Hungary, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Ukraine, Brazil, India, Malaysia, Slovak Republic, Romania, Poland, Russian Federation, South Africa, and Turkey were analyzed, and the period is between 2000 and 2015 in the study. According to the panel causality results, there is a unidirectional causality from budget deficit to current account deficit. It is concluded that hypothesis of twin deficits is valid for the country group analyzed. In the field of the triple deficit hypothesis, a strong interrelationship between domestic savings and the current account is reached, while a causal relationship between fixed capital investments and the current account balance cannot be determined. In this context, when considering domestic savings as the decisive variable in the saving-investment gap, it is concluded that the theory of triple deficit is partially valid for the group of developing countries.