External Debts and Economic Growth when Debts Rating Matters

The paper investigates the dependence pattern of economic growth on external debts supply by accounting for the safety of debts, measured by the sovereign debts rating. The method of cross-section regression is based on a sample of 145 advanced and developing economies with averaged data over 1990-2019 period. The pattern of economic growth follows an U-shaped curve, for which the growth rate is first decreasing then increasing on the external debts supply. An possible explaination can rely on the sovereign debts rating. For low supply of external debts, a higher supply of debts reduces the debts rating, which, in turn, lowers the economic growth rate. But for high enough supply of debts, more debts raise their rating, then, improving the growth rate. These results are robust on controlling for various determinants of economic growth and on the fixed-effect panel regression.