GOVERNMENT INDEBTEDNESS AND ECONOMIC GROWTH IN THE REPUBLIC OF NORTH MACEDONIA

Abstract

Government consumption plays an important role for stability of the national economy, especially in periods of economic crisis. However, rapidly growing public debt is a concerning issue nowadays, since it might jeopardize economic growth perspectives. Economic theory suggests that public debt has non-linear impact on economic growth in a form of inverted U-shape. In other words, it is believed that after a certain threshold, public debt will have negative impact on economic growth. Given that such threshold varies significantly across countries, the aim of this paper is to calculate the turning point of the public debt impact in the Republic of North Macedonia. For this purpose, we use non-linear multiple regression model for real GDP growth rate as dependent variable, general government public debt-to-GDP ratio (in nominal and squared terms) as key independent variable, as well as several other controlling variables. Since theory also suggests reverse causality between economic growth and public debt, we use three different estimation techniques (Ordinary Least Squares, Two-Stages Least Squares, and Generalized Method of Moments) to deal with potential endogeneity, as well as to cross-validate the results. Our results show that general government debt in the Republic of North Macedonia positively affects economic growth until it reaches around 30% of GDP, whereas further indebtedness after that turning point will most likely have negative impact. Given that current debt level is slightly above 40% (10 percentage points higher than the turning point), whereby due to the COVID-19 crisis it is expected to grow even more in the upcoming years, the need of urgent fiscal consolidation inevitably arises. In this regards, deeper and more comprehensive analysis is needed in order to identify adequate channels for its efficient and effective implementation.