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Public debt has surged during the current global economic crisis and is expected to increase further. This development has raised concerns whether public debt is starting to hit levels where it might negatively affect economic growth. Does such a tipping point in public debt exist? How severe would the impact of public debt be on growth beyond this threshold? What happens if debt stays above this threshold for an extended period of time? The present study addresses these questions with the help of threshold estimations based on a yearly dataset of 101 developing and developed economies spanning a time period from 1980 to 2008. The estimations establish a threshold of 77 percent public debt-to-GDP ratio. If debt is above this threshold, each additional percentage point of debt costs 0.017 percentage points of annual real growth. The effect is even more pronounced in emerging markets where the threshold is 64 percent debt-to-GDP ratio. In these countries, the loss in annual real growth with each additional percentage point in public debt amounts to 0.02 percentage points. The cumulative effect on real GDP could be substantial. Importantly, the estimations control for other variables that might impact growth, such as the initial level of per-capita-GDP.

Capital flow --- Central banks --- Debt explosions --- Debt intolerance --- Debt management --- Debt Markets --- Debt overhang --- Debt problem --- Debt ratio --- Debt ratios --- Debt threshold --- Debt thresholds --- Deficits --- Domestic financial markets --- Economic Theory & Research --- Emerging Markets --- External Debt --- Finance and Financial Sector Development --- Financial crisis --- GDP --- Government debt --- International Economics and Trade --- Macroeconomics and Economic Growth --- Private Sector Development --- Public debt --- Public Sector Development --- Public Sector Economics --- Real GDP --- Sovereign debt

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This paper analyzes the drivers and consequences of sudden stops of capital flows. It focuses on the impact of external vulnerability on the depth and length of sudden stop crises. The authors analyze 43 developing and developed countries between 1993 and 2006. They find evidence that external vulnerability not only significantly impacts the probability of a sudden stop crisis, but also prolongs the time it takes for growth to revert to its long-term trend once a sudden stop occurs. Interestingly, external vulnerability does not significantly impact the size of the instantaneous output effect in case of a sudden stop but prompts a cumulative output effect through significantly diminishing the speed of adjustment of output to its trend. This finding implies that countries financing a large part of their absorption externally do not suffer more ferocious output losses in a sudden stop crisis, but take longer to adapt afterward and are hence expected to suffer more protracted crises periods. Compared with previous literature, this paper makes three contributions: (i) it extends the country and time coverage relative to datasets that have previously been used to analyze related topics; (ii) it specifically accounts for time-series autocorrelation; and (iii) it provides an analysis of the adjustment path of economic growth after a sudden stop.

Adjustment dynamics --- Adjustment path --- Annual growth --- Capital flows --- Currencies and Exchange Rates --- Debt Markets --- Descriptive statistics --- Economic Growth --- Economic growth --- Economic policy --- Economic Theory and Research --- Emerging Markets --- Equilibrium --- Exchange rate fluctuations --- Finance and Financial Sector Development --- Financial crisis --- Growth performance --- Growth rate --- Growth rates --- Inequality --- International financial markets --- Investment and Investment Climate --- Macroeconomic Management --- Macroeconomics and Economic Growth --- Poverty Reduction --- Poverty reduction --- Private Sector Development --- Pro-Poor Growth --- Real exchange rate --- Robustness checks --- Speed of adjustment --- Time horizon --- Trade shocks