Government Debt, Deficits and Interest Rates 1870–2016

Ronald Smith

A chapter in Essays in Honor of M. Hashem Pesaran: Prediction and Macro Modeling, 2022, vol. 43A, pp 323-340 from Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Abstract: This chapter examines the effect of changes in the public debt–gross domestic product (GDP) ratio on long, 10 year, interest rates in a panel of 17 countries over the period 1870–2016 controlling for other variables, in particular the world interest rate. Over this long period, one can argue that most of the big changes in public debt were the product of factors largely exogenous to national interest rate determination, such as war, depression or financial crisis. The issue is of current relevance since the Covid-19 pandemic has caused large increases in the ratio of public debt to GDP in many countries. The estimates suggest that it is the change in debt, rather than the level of debt or the deficit that matters for long interest rates. World interest rates have long- and short-run effects on interest rates which are very well determined and close to one. Current inflation has a small but significant effect.

Keywords: Public debt; government deficits; interest rates; world interest rates; macrohistory; pandemic; C23; E43; F36; H63 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eme:aecozz:s0731-90532021000043a015

DOI: 10.1108/S0731-90532021000043A015

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