SUSTAINABILITY OF EXTERNAL DEBT: PANEL COINTEGRATION ANALYSIS OF THE FRAGILE FIVE

Abstract

Expansionary monetary and fiscal policies implemented after the economic contraction brought on by the covid-19 pandemic and the ensuing global crisis caused the debt sustainability problem to become the primary concern of all national economies. Consequently, analyzing India, Brazil, Mexico, South Africa and Turkey has become more important as these countries have structural weaknesses in their balance of payments. In this study, the debt sustainability of these countries, which are also known as the fragile five due to their similar problems in macroeconomic variables, was analyzed for the period of 2001-2019. The paper adopts the methodology developed by Hakkio and Rush (1991), Sawada (1994), and onel and Utkulu (2006). In this context, the cointegration relationship between the variables that cause and decrease external debt was examined using the Panel ECM test (Westerlund, 2007). This paper utilzies countries' trade balance, change in central bank currency reserves, net public transfers and interest rate (Libor and CDS) on total debt as variables. Results of the panel cointegration test show that the countries' sustainability of external debt is weak. The country-level analyses show that only Mexico has strong external debt sustainability and Turkey, having the highest CDS premium among the five, has the weakest external debt sustainability