0000000000358794
AUTHOR
Juan A. Rojas
Implicit Public Debt Thresholds: An Empirical Exercise for the Case of Spain
We extend previous work that combines the Value at Risk approach with estimation of the correlation pattern of the macroeconomic determinants of public debt dynamics by means of Vector Auto Regressions (VARs). These estimated models are used to compute the probability that the public debt ratio exceeds a given threshold, by means of Monte Carlo simulations. We apply this methodology to Spanish data and compute time-series probabilities to analyse the possible correlation with market risk assessment, measured by the spread over the German bond. Taking into account the high correlation between the probability of crossing a pre-specified debt threshold and the spread, we go a step further and …
Implicit public debt thresholds: An operational proposal
Abstract Gauging the public debt-to-GDP ratio a country can sustain in the medium-run without putting fiscal sustainability at risk is a question of key relevance for policy-makers. Deviations from a safe level of debt should be watched over in order to take corrective measures. In this paper we make a proposal for an operational characterization of the “prudent debt level”. To do so, we use standard methods based on Vector Autoregressions to compute the probability that the public debt ratio exceeds a given threshold, using the Spanish case as an example. The resulting probabilities are highly and positively correlated with market risk assessment, measured by the spread with respect to the…