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Growth in a Time of Debt - The National Bureau of Economic ...

NBER WORKING paper SERIES. Growth IN A TIME OF DEBT. Carmen M. Reinhart Kenneth S. Rogoff Working paper 15639. National Bureau OF Economic RESEARCH. 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138. January 2010. this paper was prepared for the American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings. The authors would like to thank Olivier Jeanne and Vincent R. Reinhart for helpful comments and the National Science Foundation Grant No. 0849224 for financial support. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research. NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peer- reviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications.

2 I. Introduction In this paper, we exploit a new multi-country historical data set on central government debt as well as more recent data on external (public and …

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Transcription of Growth in a Time of Debt - The National Bureau of Economic ...

1 NBER WORKING paper SERIES. Growth IN A TIME OF DEBT. Carmen M. Reinhart Kenneth S. Rogoff Working paper 15639. National Bureau OF Economic RESEARCH. 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138. January 2010. this paper was prepared for the American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings. The authors would like to thank Olivier Jeanne and Vincent R. Reinhart for helpful comments and the National Science Foundation Grant No. 0849224 for financial support. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research. NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peer- reviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications.

2 2010 by Carmen M. Reinhart and Kenneth S. Rogoff. All rights reserved. Short sections of text, not to exceed two paragraphs, may be quoted without explicit permission provided that full credit, including notice, is given to the source. Growth in a Time of Debt Carmen M. Reinhart and Kenneth S. Rogoff NBER Working paper No. 15639. January 2010, Revised January 2010. JEL No. E2,E3,E6,F3,F4,N10. ABSTRACT. We study Economic Growth and inflation at different levels of government and external debt. Our analysis is based on new data on forty-four countries spanning about two hundred years. The dataset incorporates over 3,700 annual observations covering a wide range of political systems, institutions, exchange rate arrangements, and historic circumstances. Our main findings are: First, the relationship between government debt and real GDP Growth is weak for debt/GDP ratios below a threshold of 90.

3 Percent of GDP. Above 90 percent, median Growth rates fall by one percent, and average Growth falls considerably more. We find that the threshold for public debt is similar in advanced and emerging economies. Second, emerging markets face lower thresholds for external debt (public and private) which is usually denominated in a foreign currency. When external debt reaches 60 percent of GDP, annual Growth declines by about two percent; for higher levels, Growth rates are roughly cut in half. Third, there is no apparent contemporaneous link between inflation and public debt levels for the advanced countries as a group (some countries, such as the United States, have experienced higher inflation when debt/GDP is high). The story is entirely different for emerging markets, where inflation rises sharply as debt increases.

4 Carmen M. Reinhart University of Maryland Department of Economics 4118D Tydings Hall College Park, MD 20742. and NBER. Kenneth S. Rogoff Thomas D Cabot Professor of Public Policy Economics Department Harvard University Littauer Center 216. Cambridge, MA 02138-3001. and NBER. I. Introduction in this paper , we exploit a new multi-country historical data set on central government debt as well as more recent data on external (public and private) debt to search for a systematic relationship 1. between debt levels, Growth and inflation. Our main result is that whereas the link between Growth and debt seems relatively weak at normal debt levels, median Growth rates for countries with public debt over 90 percent of GDP are roughly one percent lower than otherwise; average (mean) Growth rates are several percent lower.

5 Surprisingly, the relationship between public debt and Growth is remarkably similar across emerging markets and advanced economies. Emerging markets do face a much more binding threshold for total gross external debt (public and private) which is almost exclusively denominated in a foreign currency. We find no systematic relationship between high debt levels and inflation for advanced economies as a group (albeit with individual country exceptions including the United States). By contrast, inflation rates are markedly higher in emerging market countries with higher public debt levels. Our topic would seem to be a timely one. Government debt has been soaring in the wake of the recent global financial maelstrom, especially in the epi-center countries. this might have been expected.

6 Using a benchmark of 14 earlier severe post-World-War II financial crises, we demonstrated (one year ago) that central government debt rises, on average, by about 86 percent within three years after the 1. in this paper public debt refers to gross central government debt. Domestic public debt is government debt issued under domestic legal jurisdiction. Public debt does not include debts carrying a government guarantee. Total gross external debt includes the external debts of all branches of government as well as private debt that is issued by domestic private entities under a foreign jurisdiction. 2. Reinhart and Rogoff (2009a, b) demonstrate that the aftermath of a deep financial crisis typically involves a protracted period of macroeconomic adjustment, particularly in employment and housing prices.

7 2. Outsized deficits and epic bank bailouts may be useful in fighting a downturn, but what is the long run macroeconomic impact or higher levels of government debt, especially against the backdrop of graying populations and rising social insurance costs? Our approach here is decidedly empirical, taking advantage of a broad new historical data set on public debt (in particular, central government debt), first presented in Reinhart and Rogoff (2008, 2009b). Prior to this data set, it was exceedingly difficult to get more than two or three decades of public debt data even for many rich countries, and virtually impossible for most emerging markets. 3 Our results incorporate data on forty-four countries spanning about two hundred years. Taken together, the data incorporate over 3,700 annual observations covering a wide range of political systems, institutions, exchange rate and monetary arrangements, and historic circumstances.

8 We also employ more recent data on external debt, including both debt owed by governments and by private entities. For emerging markets, we find that there exists a significantly more severe threshold for total gross external debt (public and private) -- which tends to be almost exclusively denominated in a foreign currency -- than for total public debt (the domestically-issued component of which is largely denominated in home currency.) When gross external debt reaches 60 percent of GDP, annual Growth declines by about two percent; for levels of external debt in excess of 90 percent of GDP, Growth rates are roughly cut in half. We are not in a position to calculate separate total external debt thresholds (as opposed to public debt thresholds) for advanced countries. The available time series is too recent, beginning only in early 2000s as a byproduct of the International Monetary Fund efforts and creation of the Special 3.

9 For other related efforts on developing cross country public debt data bases, including Reinhart, Rogoff and Savasatano (2003) and Jeanne and Guscina (2006), see the discussion in Reinhart and Rogoff (2009b). 3. Data Dissemination Standard (SDDS). We do note, however, that external debt levels in advanced countries now average about 200 percent of GDP, with external debt levels being particularly high across Europe. The focus of this paper is on the longer term macroeconomic implications of much higher public and external debt. The final section, however, discusses the role of private domestic debt examining the historical experience of the United States. We highlight episodes of private sector deleveraging of debts, normal after a systemic financial crisis; not surprisingly, such episodes are associated with very slow Growth and deflation.

10 II. The Global 2007-2009 Buildup in Public Debt Figure 1 illustrates the increase in (inflation adjusted) public debt that has occurred since 2007. For the five countries with systemic financial crises (Iceland, Ireland, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States), average debt levels are up by about 75 percent, well on track to reach or surpass the three year 86 percent benchmark that Reinhart and Rogoff (2009a,b) find for earlier deep post-war financial crises. Even in countries that have not experienced a major financial crisis, debt rose an average of about 20 percent in real terms between 2007 and this general rise in public indebtedness stands in stark contrast to the 2003-2006 period of public deleveraging in many countries and owes to direct bail-out costs in some countries, the adoption of stimulus packages to deal with the global recession in many countries, and marked declines in government revenues that have hit advanced and emerging market economies alike.


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