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Due to the financial disturbances created by the COVID-19 pandemic and the burden on the government exchequer, it is expected to see a rise in the knowledge base of the research corpus so far as the government's fiscal sustainability is concerned. Therefore, the present research examines a systematic quantitative analysis of public debt sustainability research by applying a bibliometric approach. Research also analyzes journals, institutions, countries and authors contributing to public debt sustainability.

This paper scrutinizes the published scientific research on public debt sustainability based on the dataset of 535 articles from 1991 to 2021 obtained from the Scopus database. Biblioshiny (R-based application) and VoSviewer software were used to perform bibliometric analysis through Performance analysis and science mapping techniques. The authors combined co-citation analysis (CCA), bibliometric analysis, keyword co-occurrence analysis (KCA) and a conceptual thematic map of the most cited articles to find the intellectual structure.

The research identified three dominating clusters, e.g. fiscal sustainability and policy rules, empirical sustainability testing and debt and growth dynamics. Another finding was that most articles were analytical and empirical and few descriptive articles were found. Owing to the empirical nature of the domain, the issues concerning public debt sustainability have continued to change over the past decades for different economies, reflecting the complexity and diversity of economic structures of different economies at different times.

The insight of this article provides academicians and researchers with a more refined comprehension of the conceptual and intellectual structure of the research corpus. The present research complements the existing literature review studies by pushing the research towards emerging or less developed issues such as financial and debt crises.

The purpose of this paper is to study debt sustainability of countries with a resource-based economy on the example of the Republic of Kazakhstan and the Russian Federation.

Macroeconomic indicators and data on external and internal public debt of the Republic of Kazakhstan and the Russian Federation for the period from 2007 to 2019 were analyzed using quantitative, qualitative, comparative, descriptive and graphical methods. Based on the collected data, the indicators were calculated, analyzed and compared, taking into account the threshold values, using The Debt Sustainability Framework for Low-Income Countries of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

The results of the study showed that the indicators of the public debt of both the Republic of Kazakhstan and the Russian Federation, during the period covered by the study, were in the zone of reduced risk and were stable. In addition, the study revealed a slight shift in the structure of the public debt of the Republic of Kazakhstan toward a decrease in the share of domestic borrowing (from 67% to 55%), whereas in the structure of the Russian public debt, the share of domestic borrowing increased significantly (from 52% to 74%).

The results of this study can be applied by scientists to analyze the sustainability of public debt in various countries and regions, as well as by officials to determine the fiscal and budgetary policies of the Republic of Kazakhstan and the Russian Federation, as well as other states.

This paper aims to apply the debt sustainability framework using various ratios to review the current state of sovereign debt of Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) member countries.

Debt sustainability framework using various ratios (which include the present value approach, Country Policy and Institutional Assessment debt policy assessment ranking and solvency ratio of external debt) for the period 2010 and 2017 were used for the analysis to determine external debt sustainability and solvency of ECOWAS members.

The findings indicate that most ECOWAS countries are already turning at the unsustainable debt path and may renege in their debt obligations, thus creating a vicious cycle of external borrowing that could lead to capital flight.

This paper offers the empirical evidence to identify which of the ECOWAS countries are already at the threshold of external debt stress, and in the likelihood to renege on their debt obligations.

This study examines and compares different specifications of the fiscal policy rule in the fiscal sustainability analysis of Nigeria.

This is methodologically achieved by estimating the baseline constant-parameter and Markov regime switching fiscal models. The asymmetric autoregressive distributed lag fiscal model is also employed to substantiate the differential responses of fiscal authorities to public debt.

The baseline constant-parameter fiscal model provides mixed results of sustainable and unsustainable fiscal policy. The inconclusiveness is adduced to instability in primary fiscal balance–public debt dynamics. This makes it necessary to capture regime switches in the fiscal policy rule. The Markov switching estimations show a protracted fiscal unsustainable regime that is inconsistent with the intertemporal budget constraint (IBC). The no-Ponzi game and debt stabilizing results of the Markov switching fiscal model further revealed that the transversality and debt stability conditions were not satisfied. Additional findings from the asymmetric autoregressive model estimation show that fiscal consolidation responses vary with contraction and expansion in output and spending, coupled with downturns and upturns in public debt dynamics in both the long and short run. These findings thus confirm the presence of asymmetries in the fiscal policy authorities' reactions to public debt. Further, additional evidences show the violation of the IBC which is exacerbated by the deleterious effect of the pro-cyclical fiscal policy response in boom on the improvement of the primary fiscal balance.

This study deviates from the extant literature by accommodating time variation, periodic switches and fiscal policy asymmetries in the fiscal sustainability analysis of Nigeria.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of structural economic vulnerability of developing countries on their public indebtedness.

The authors perform the analysis by the use of fixed effects technique where the standard errors are corrected by the Driscoll-Kraay (1998) method. The panel covers 96 developing countries over the period 1980-2008.

The results suggest evidence of a “U-shaped” relationship between the structural vulnerability and the total public debt in developing countries. More particularly in low-income countries (LICs), the structural vulnerability appears to be a strong determinant of the build-up of the total public debt.

It would be interesting to extend the research to small Island developing states. Indeed, the authors do not include this group of countries because of lack of data, especially on the variable “quality of governance” for almost all countries of this group. Accordingly, the research should be extended to such countries as well as these data are available.

The implications of the study is that international institutions, including those of the Bretton Woods should take into account the structural vulnerability of developing countries when designing development policies, especially the ones related to debt sustainability in developing countries and particularly LICs.

The fact of the international institutions to take into account the structural vulnerability in the design of international development policy, especially those related to debt issues will have major implications on the macroeconomic policy design by these developing countries as well as on poverty reduction.

The added value of this paper is to use recent data on structural vulnerability to analyse the effect of the latter on public indebtdeness of developing countries.

The study of the link between debt and growth has been full of debates, both in theory and empirics. However, there is a growing consensus that the relationship is sensitive to the level of debt. The purpose of this paper is to address the question of non-linearity in the long-term relationship between public debt and economic growth. Specifically, the author set out to test if there exists an established “laffer curve” type relationship, where debt contributes to economic growth up to a certain point (maximal threshold) and then starts to have a negative effect on growth afterwards.

To carry out the tests, the author has used a methodology that delivers a superior test of inverse U-shapes (Lind and Mehlum, 2010), in addition to the traditional test based on a regression with a quadratic specification.

The results in the paper present evidence of a bell-shaped relationship between economic growth and total public debt in a panel of low-income Sub-Saharan African economies. This supports the hypothesis that debt has some positive contribution to economic growth in low-income countries, albeit up to a point.

The overall result supports the claim that public debt may start to be a drag on economic growth if it goes on increasing beyond the level where it would be sustainable.

This paper leads the way by implementing a robust test of non-linearity (“inverse-U” test) to the analyses the debt-growth nexus and the laffer curve in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The management of external debt among highly indebted poor countries (HIPCs) in Africa still remains a challenge despite numerous packages and attempts to ameliorate the consequences of such odious debt. The purpose of this paper is to establish the factors that contribute to the growth rate of external debt and how these factors respond to shocks to external debt growth rate in Africa.

Data were obtained from 24 African countries and analyzed using a panel vector autoregression estimation methodology.

The study found that external debt growth rates respond positively to unit shock or changes in government investment spending, consumption spending, and domestic borrowings over a long period of time. In the medium term, external debt growth rates respond negatively to shocks in tax revenue, inflation, and output growth rates. The paper also provides empirical support that external debt may be consumed rather than invested among HIPCs in Africa.

The findings of this paper are limited to only HIPCs in Africa.

This study has some few debilitating implications for external debt management among HIPCs in Africa. First, the paper suggests that debt repayment may be a problem. This is largely because external debt is consumed rather than invested. External debt sustainability needs a holistic approach in less developed countries. The findings place much emphasis on improvements in gross domestic product and tax revenues as the principal routes out of the debt doldrums. However, this option must be exploited with great caution as there is ample evidence that these poor countries increase their external borrowing capacities with improvements in economic outlook.

This paper fills a research gap that identifies specific components of government deficit budgets that may be contributing to the growth rate of external debts among HIPCs.

This paper aims to test whether a debt threshold of public debt has any effect on economic growth in Africa.

The authors applied the panel autoregressive distributed models on 38 African countries with annual data from 1970 to 2015. It was established that the threshold and the trajectory of debt has an impact on economic growth.

Specifically, the authors found that public debt hampers economic growth when the depth is in the region of 20 to 80 per cent of GDP. Based on debt trajectory, this study established that increasing public debt beyond 50 to 80 per cent of GDP adversely affects economic growth in Africa. The study also finds that the persistent rise in debt also has adverse effect on economic growth in the African countries in the sample. It must be known to policymakers that the threshold of debt in developing countries, and for that matter African countries, are less than that of developed countries.

This study suggests threshold effects between 20 and 50 per cent; this should be a guide for policymakers in the accumulation of debt stock. Interestingly, the findings suggest some debt trajectory effect, which policymakers might consider by increasing efforts to reduce debt levels when they fall between 50 to 80 per cent of GDP. This implies that reducing such debt levels can help African countries increase their economic growth.

The study is unique because it seeks to add new evidence on the relationship between public debt and growth in the African region, by considering the impact of the persistent growth of public debt on economic growth.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse, from an empirical point of view, the importance of each of the main sources of funding in developing countries (foreign direct investment, official development assistance, external debt and remittances) in achieving sustainable, social and inclusive development.

The methodology followed to achieve this purpose is the construction of three econometric models. The general model incorporates as a dependent variable the Human Development Index (HDI) and, as explanatory variables, the four sources of funding indicated above, as well as three exogenous variables (human capital, corruption and natural resources). This model is complemented by two extensions that aim to analyse the behaviour of explanatory variables in reducing inequalities and improving each of the HDI components.

The results of the estimations of the econometric models show that foreign direct investment and remittances are the sources of funding with the greatest impact on achieving development. Moreover, official development assistance while not making a positive contribution to the achievement of development as a whole, could be adequate to reduce inequalities.

The added value of this paper consists in carrying out a joint analysis of these four sources of funding because previous researches focussed the attention on some of them, drawing partial conclusions. The conclusion of this study is that the four sources of funding analysed can be considered complementary to promote sustainable and inclusive development, although foreign direct investment has a much more important role.

According to official statements, BRI is a Chinese call for global cooperation, based on five priorities: policy coordination, facilities connectivity, unimpeded trade, financial integration and people-to-people bonds. The purpose of this paper is, primarily, to describe and contextualize the official discourse of China's foreign policy toward Latin America, emphasizing on BRI. On that basis, the author aims to contrast official rhetoric with real facts, bringing problematic cases associated with implementing BRI in Asian and African developing countries, so as to discuss possible challenges that Latin America can encounter when implementing the initiative. Finally, the author evaluates potential implications of resembling the Chinese three-level scheme of development in the region and make suggestions on this subject.

In an effort to evaluate possible implications of BRI in Latin America, the paper describes and contextualizes Chinese foreign policy official rhetoric toward the region's countries. Based on that, the author brings to discussion Asian and African experiences in the implementation of the initiative and raise questions on controversial issues that Latin America could meet when enforcing BRI-related projects.

As a part of its new foreign and economic policies, China continues to strengthen its engagement with Latin American countries, enlarging its strategy though the promotion of BRI. If Latin American countries, through BRI, seek to replicate the Chinese three-level of development scheme, including domestic, regional and global scopes, certain controversial issues cannot be ignored in the design and implementation processes. Also, equal participation of Chinese and Latin American governments, societies and enterprises is decisive if the goal is to settle a long-term development scenario for the region.

The central thesis of this paper is that the implementation of BRI in Latin American countries could potentially replicate the Chinese three-level development proposal. To achieve such an ambitious goal, much depends on how Latin American countries define and enforce BRI projects. Full understanding of those challenges requires close attention to what the Chinese official rhetoric claims and what actually puts into practice in other developing countries already involved in BRI, so as to anticipate possible consequences for the region.