Debt and growth: Is there a non-monotonic relation?

Alfred Greiner

Economics Bulletin, 2013, vol. 33, issue 1, 340-347

Abstract: In this note we theoretically investigate the question of whether the relationship between public debt and economic growth is characterized by an inverse U-shaped functional form. Starting point of our analysis is the paper by Checherita-Westphal et al. (2012) who present an endogenous growth model with public capital and public debt that displays a hump-shaped relation between debt and economic growth. We highlight the mechanism that generates this outcome and we generalize their model by allowing for a more general debt policy. We demonstrate that this non-monotonic relation only holds if public deficits are exogenously fixed and exactly equal to public investment at each point in time. With a more general debt policy, one realizes that smaller public deficits and lower public debt always lead to a higher balanced growth rate. Thus, starting from a situation where the public deficit equals public investment, governments can raise the long-run growth rate by reducing their deficits.

Keywords: Government debt; economic growth; non-monotonic relation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H6 O2 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013-02-08
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (19)

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