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Original Sin, Currency Depreciation and External Debt Burden: Evidence from India

Author

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  • Blessy Augustine

    (Institute for Financial Management and Research, (Affiliated to University of Madras), Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India.)

  • Lakshmi Kumar

    (Institute for Financial Management and Research, (Affiliated to University of Madras), Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India.)

Abstract

Indian Rupee has depreciated around 50 percent against the US Dollar for the last two decades. This depreciating trend generally doesn't call for any policy interventions as the conventional theories state that it is advantageous for the domestic economy through the competitiveness effect. However, depreciation is expected to increase the external debt burden when the country borrows abroad in foreign currency. At present more than 63 percent of India's external debt is foreign currency-denominated. Given this, the ramifications of a depreciating rupee through the balance sheet channel invite greater attention. This paper makes an attempt to understand the impact that a depreciating Indian Rupee will have on India's external debt dynamics. To this end, we estimated an Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model using quarterly data for the period 2001-2018. The empirical evidence shows that the depreciation of rupee increases external indebtedness significantly. In the short run, one rupee depreciation increases external debt to GDP ratio by 0.75 percent while in the long run, the increase is 1.26 percent. The study also finds a causal link between external debt and economic growth in the Indian context, which makes the depreciation - debt valuation problem highly relevant.

Suggested Citation

  • Blessy Augustine & Lakshmi Kumar, 2020. "Original Sin, Currency Depreciation and External Debt Burden: Evidence from India," International Journal of Economics and Financial Issues, Econjournals, vol. 10(3), pages 58-68.
  • Handle: RePEc:eco:journ1:2020-03-8
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Fisera, Boris & Workie Tiruneh, Menbere & Hojdan, David, 2021. "Currency depreciations in emerging economies: A blessing or a curse for external debt management?," International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 168(C), pages 132-165.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    External debt; Original Sin; Balance sheet effect; Exchange rate depreciation; India;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F30 - International Economics - - International Finance - - - General
    • F34 - International Economics - - International Finance - - - International Lending and Debt Problems
    • H63 - Public Economics - - National Budget, Deficit, and Debt - - - Debt; Debt Management; Sovereign Debt
    • H87 - Public Economics - - Miscellaneous Issues - - - International Fiscal Issues; International Public Goods

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