How Does Public Debt Affect the Indian Macroeconomy? A Structural VAR Approach

Abstract

The study investigates the macroeconomic effects of public debt in India during 1980–2017 using a structural vector autoregression framework. The objective is to examine the impact of public debt on the interest rate, investment, inflation and economic growth in India. The results of the impulse response functions show that public debt has an adverse impact on economic growth but a positive impact on the long-term interest rate in the short run and a mixed effect (both negative and positive) on investment and inflation. We also find that domestic debt has a more adverse impact on the economy than external debt. The estimated variance decomposition analysis finds that much of the variation in selected macro variables are explained by public debt and growth in India. This study suggests that public debt especially domestic debt should be controlled and channelled productively to have a favourable impact on the economy. JEL Classification: H63, O40, C40. © 2020 National Council of Applied Economic Research.