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The unsustainable public debt of most African economies adversely affects their economic growth and stability. This study aims to explore the influence of cross-country indicators of governance from African countries on public debt accumulation.

The study deployed a quantitative research design technique. Secondary data was used in this study. The frequency of the data is annual, and it is available from 1996 to 2022 for 48 countries in Africa. The study deployed the system generalized method of moments for the estimation.

The study finds that countries with high regulatory quality standards, control corruption and ensure effective governance accumulate less government debt while countries that abide by the rule of law instead accumulate more government debt. The study also finds that economic growth and government revenue reduce government gross debt while government expenditure and investments increase public debt.

Due to data unavailability, other factors which are likely to influence government debt accumulation were not included in the study as control variables. This is the limitation of the study.

African governments should strive to maintain high regulatory quality standards through the formulation and implementation of sound policies and regulations that permit and promote private sector development, and ensure quality and accountability of public and civil services. Governments are also urged to control corruption and enact good laws so that the enforcement of these laws will not worsen the risk of becoming debt-distressed.

Recent studies on governance and public debt were focused on the Arabian Gulf countries, countries of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region and a combination of high and low-income countries. This study scrutinizes exclusively the effects of the quality of governance indicators on public debt accumulation, in the context of Africa.

The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between government spending, public debt and the informal economy. In addition, this paper investigates the moderating role of public debt in government spending and the informal economy nexus.

By utilizing a data set spanning from 2000 to 2017 of 32 Asian economies, the study has employed the dynamic ordinary least squares (DOLS) and fully modified ordinary least squares (FMOLS). The study is also extended to consider the marginal effects of government spending on the informal economy at different degrees of public debt.

The results indicate that an increase in government spending and public debt leads to an expansion of the informal economy in the region. Interestingly, the positive effect of government spending on the informal economy will increase with a rise in public debt.

This study stresses the role of government spending and public debt on the informal economy in Asian nations. To the best of the authors' knowledge, this study pioneers to explore the moderating effect of public debt in the public spending-informal economy nexus.

This chapter examines the influence of external public borrowing resources on economic progress in Tunisia. The study focuses on two stages: First, the influence is studied in a direct sense and then in an indirect sense, i.e., through a transmission channel of this influence. By applying the autoregressive distributed technique with staggered lags (ARDL), over a period ranging from 1986 to 2019, the results showed that the influence of external borrowing resources on growth seems to be unfavorable in the short term but positive in the long term, hence the importance of the empirical technique chosen. Second, three interaction variables were tested, namely total government expenditure, government investment expenditure, and the real effective exchange rate. The results obtained call for better attention to the channels identified to maximize the positive influence of external public debt on the country's economic progress.

This paper aims to answer the following important questions: Is public debt in Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries sustainable? What are the determinants of public debt sustainability in these countries, and do these determinants exhibit heterogeneity due to regional, natural resource, and income differences among SSA countries?

This study analyzes the public debt sustainability in SSA countries using the theoretical model known as the Present Value Budget Constraint (PVBC) model developed by Hamilton and Flavin (1986), and adopts the econometric testing method proposed by Trehan and Walsh (1991). Moreover, to empirically investigate the determinants of public debt sustainability in SSA countries, the System-Generalized Method of Moments (System-GMM) method is applied. Furthermore, this study conducts heterogeneity analysis by categorizing the sample based on different regions, natural resource endowments, and income levels. The data of this study are sourced from the IMF and World Bank databases for 45 SSA countries from 2005 to 2021.

Findings reveal that public debt in SSA countries is not sustainable in the long run, with factors such as the previous government debt, long-term debt ratio, debt repayment capacity, economic growth rate, inflation rate, export to GDP, and government fiscal deficit rate influencing sustainability. Additionally, the factors exhibit heterogeneity attributed to regional, natural resource, and income variations among SSA countries.

The findings of our study will serve as a catalyst for policymakers in the SSA countries to embrace and sustain robust fiscal consolidation and debt stabilization measures. Moreover, countries with distinct characteristics should implement tailored approaches. Additionally, policymakers in SSA countries should implement economic measures to address public debt issues. These measures include improving the macroeconomic structure, promoting economic transformation and diversification of industries, fostering sustainable economic growth, ensuring price stability, and strengthening resilience against external shocks and debt risks. Specifically, countries endowed with indigenous species, resources, and tourism potential should adopt a well-coordinated strategy that utilizes agriculture, tourism, ecotourism, and the hospitality industry as instruments for sustainable local community and rural development.

Firstly, it assesses the sustainability of public debt and its determinants for countries in SSA, which distinguishes it from previous studies that only focus on either debt sustainability or determinants of debt separately. Secondly, by including multiple SSA countries in the analysis, this study stands out from prior research that predominantly concentrates on specific nations. Thirdly, the utilization of the System-GMM method for analyzing determinants adds a novel dimension to this study, departing from earlier literature primarily focused on debt thresholds. Lastly, the heterogeneity analysis conducted in this study provides an empirical foundation for tailoring policies to different countries, addressing a facet often overlooked in earlier literature.

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.

This study aims to examine the impact of board characteristics on debt choice.

The sample comprises of unique nonfinancial firms listed in the FTSE 350 over the period 2011–2018. This study uses Tobit and OLS regressions to check the impact of board characteristics on debt choice. The results are robust to the battery of robust checks.

This study finds that board size and board independence are positively associated with public debt. However, CEO duality and board meetings frequency are inversely associated with public debt. Overall, the findings are consistent with the “financial intermediation theory” that the firms with weak governance rely on bank financing, and firms with better corporate governance go for public debt.

This study offers significant insights for investors and policymakers.

This study offers new insights regarding the role of board characteristics in firms’ debt choice by showing the significant impact of board characteristics on debt choice. The findings indicate that the board’s efficient internal monitoring may substitute external monitoring by the bank.

The authors examine how the major board reforms recently implemented by countries around the world affect firms' choice of debt.

Using a quasi-experimental setting of major board reforms around the world that aim to improve board-related governance practices in various areas, this study investigates the impact of effective board monitoring on corporate debt choice. The authors employ difference-in-differences-type quasi-natural experiment method and path analysis for hypotheses testing.

The authors find that the implementation of board reforms is positively associated with firms' preference for public debt financing over bank debt. However, this effect tends to weaken after the fourth year following the implementation of board reforms. In additional analyses, the authors find that “rule-based” reforms have a more pronounced effect on firms' choice of debt than do “comply-or-explain” reforms. Both (1) strengthened firm-level internal governance practices that address concerns about the agency cost of debt and (2) reduced information asymmetries play important roles in facilitating firms' debt choice, but the evidence suggests that the former is the economic mechanism through which country-level reforms affect corporate debt choice.

The study extends the literature examining the heterogeneity of corporate debt choices in a global setting and the literature on the consequences of corporate governance reforms.

The findings demonstrate the effectiveness of the corporate board reforms implemented in countries around the world, addressing concerns from critics about their potential harm or ineffectiveness.

The results indicate that country-level board reforms reduce the extent to which shareholder–creditor conflicts harm shareholders.

This chapter examines the impact of sectoral indebtedness on GDP in Czechia, initially a low-indebted small open economy in which debt dynamics are becoming a major concern. The impact of household debt, non-financial corporation debt and public debt is analysed with the use of local projections based on instrumental variable estimations. The results show a more pronounced influence of household debt compared to non-financial corporation and government debt. Initially, increasing household debt stimulates short-run economic activity, but in the medium run, it limits household consumption and negatively affects output. This negative impact gradually turns into a positive effect in the long run. Non-financial corporation debt has a negative short- to medium-run impact but can have a small positive effect in the long run due to the prevalence of tradable industries. Public debt initially has a short-run negative impact, but then gradually becomes positive. Overall, the findings have implications for macroeconomic policies and the importance of monitoring financial stability.

The purpose of this study is to determine whether the Ottoman Empire’s net interest payments and foreign debt were sustainable or not in terms of their burden on budget revenues, using the method of historical econometric analysis.

In this study, the period between 1847 and 1882 of the Ottoman Empire is analyzed for sustainability analysis. Within the framework of the study, unit root tests and econometric analysis methods frequently used in the literature were used to analyze the sustainability of public debt. In the econometric analysis, in addition to various unit root tests, current econometric analysis methods, in particular Fourier expansion, were also used.

The results of econometric analyses showed that the burden of interest payments and foreign debt on the budget of the Ottoman state was unsustainable. This situation clearly shows the reason for the official bankruptcy of the Ottoman Empire, which was declared in 1875.

Although this study reveals the bankruptcy process of an important structure such as the Ottoman Empire in the historical process through econometric analyses, it also gives a very important message to today’s states. Accordingly, today’s state policies and decision-making mechanisms should take these results into account and strive to make the burden of public interest payments sustainable. It is believed that the study will shed light on the public finance policies of today’s states by drawing lessons from the collapse process of the Ottoman state.

Unlike the historical assessments in the literature on the decline of the Ottoman Empire, this study presents a cliometric approach by applying current econometric analysis techniques to past historical data. The study explains the unsustainability of the Ottoman Empire’s interest payments and external debt burden in the period under consideration in a way that, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, has not been done before.

Debt sustainability and the growing level of external debt in sub-Saharan African (SSA) continue to be significant research priorities. This study aims to examine the corruption-external debt nexus in SSA economies and whether different levels of corruption better explain this relationship.

The panel quantile regression approach was applied to account for the heterogeneous effect of the exogenous variables on external debts. The research covers 30 years of panel data from 30 selected SSA economies for the period spanning from 2000 to 2021.

The empirical findings of the regression analysis demonstrate the heterogeneous influences of the exogenous variables on external debt. While there was a positive impact of foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows on external debts, corruption established a negative relationship with external debt from the 10th to the 80th quantile. The findings showed a positive link between trade openness and external debt, while they also showed a negative relationship between gross fixed capital formation and external debt.

It is implied that corruption “sands the wheels” of external debts in the selected SSA countries. Therefore, the amount of external debt that flows into SSA is inversely correlated with corruption activity.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is one of the first to use panel quantile regression to analyze how corruption affects debt dynamics across different levels of debt, allowing for a more nuanced understanding of how corruption affects debt dynamics. Based on the findings of this study, SSA countries should create enabling environments to attract FDI inflows and to continue to drive domestic revenue mobilization and capital so as to be less dependent on external debts.