The Consequences of Banking Crises for Public Debt

Davide Furceri and Aleksandra Zdzienicka ()

No 801, OECD Economics Department Working Papers from OECD Publishing

Abstract: The aim of this paper is to assess the consequences of banking crises for public debt. Using an unbalanced panel of 154 countries from 1980 to 2006, the paper shows that banking crises are associated with a significant and long-lasting increase in government debt. The effect is a function of the severity of the crisis. In particular, for severe crises, comparable to the most recent one in terms of output losses, banking crises are followed by a medium-term increase of about 37 percentage points in the government gross debt-to-GDP ratio. Measuring the increase in debt in this manner seems more appropriate than some of the measures used in the literature that have provided off-quoted and very large numbers for the run-up in debt. In addition, the debt ratio increased more in countries with a higher initial gross debt-to-GDP ratio and with a higher initial foreign debt-to-GDP ratio.

Les conséquences des crises bancaires pour la dette publique L’objectif de ce document est de déterminer l’impact des crises bancaires sur la dette publique. Les résultats obtenus utilisant un panel non-cylindré de 154 pays sur la période 1980-2006 montrent que les crises bancaires provoquent une augmentation significative et persistante de la dette publique. Cet effet dépend de la sévérité de la crise. Plus précisément, les crises dont la sévérité est comparable à la crise la plus récente en termes de pertes de PIB augmentent la dette publique brute par rapport PIB d’environ 37 points de pourcentage à moyen terme. Cette approche semble être plus appropriée par rapport à celles utilisées dans la littérature qui centrées sur la dette publique elle-même rapportent l’impact beaucoup plus important des crises bancaires. De plus, l’impact des crises bancaires croît en fonction du niveau initial de la dette public et de la dette extérieur par rapport au PIB.

Keywords: banking crisis; crise bancaire; crise financière; dette publique; financial crisis; public debt (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E6 G1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010-08-25
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ban, nep-cba and nep-mac
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (21)

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https://doi.org/10.1787/5km7v02j85zp-en (text/html)

Related works:
Journal Article: The Consequences of Banking Crises for Public Debt (2012)
Working Paper: The Consequences of Banking Crises on Public Debt (2010)
Working Paper: The Consequences of Banking Crises on Public Debt (2010)
Working Paper: The Consequences of Banking Crises for Public Debt (2010)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oec:ecoaaa:801-en

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