The long‐run effect of public debt on economic growth: Evidence from India

Abstract

This paper examines the long run relationship between public debt and economic growth in India for the period 1980–2018 using the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach. The bounds test results suggest that gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, internal and external public debt, fixed investment and trade openness are cointegrated implying the existence of a long run equilibrium relationship between these variables. We find that both internal and external public debt have significant negative effect on economic growth in the long run whereas, investment has significant positive effect on the growth rate of output per capita. The error‐correction model shows that the long run equilibrium relationship is stable and the adjustment towards equilibrium is relatively high. Our findings suggest that too much reliance on public debt must be discouraged since it has adverse effect on economic growth in the long run. The government should adopt investment‐supportive policies to enhance economic growth of the country.