Public debt sustainability in Western Balkan countries

Zdravković, Aleksandar and Bradić-Martinović, Aleksandra (2012) Public debt sustainability in Western Balkan countries. In: European integration process in Western Balkan countries. Faculty of Economics of the University of Coimbra, Coimbra, pp. 472-492. ISBN 978-972-9344-05-3

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Abstract

In this work we analyse framework for debt sustainability assessment (DSA), which is used by IMF country teams for the projections of mid-term debt-to-GDP ratio. Comparative analysis of DSA application to WB countries shows that under the baseline scenario, fiscal solvency of countries seems to be stable in period of five years ahead. Stress testing under the deterministic scheme of shocks shows that under the certain circumstances public debt of Montenegro, Albania and Croatia could turn to reach such high levels of debt-to-GDP that arguably could not be sustained in the long-run. Furthermore, we provide some methodological criticism and empirical evidence that DSA projections tend to underestimate or overestimate actual values even for short forecasting period ahead. We propose methodological improvements based on Garcia and Rigobon (2004) work and apply it on Serbian monthly data, comparing the results with IMF mid-term projections. Our projections of debt-to-GDP ratio in three years ahead give the significantly higher values than those given by IMF and strongly suggest that Serbia could face considerably high levels of debt-to-GDP ratio in mid-run, even without adverse macroeconomic shocks.

Item Type: Book Section
Additional Information: COBISS.SR-ID=512191586
Uncontrolled Keywords: debt sustainability assessment, debt-to-GDP forecast, Vector Autoregression Model, impulse response analysis, Western Balkan
Research Department: Macroeconomics
Depositing User: Users 5 not found.
Date Deposited: 28 Jul 2015 17:34
Last Modified: 11 Jun 2020 08:57
URI: http://ebooks.ien.bg.ac.rs/id/eprint/99
Author Links: No links available.

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