📣 📚 New Release! We just published a Working Paper along with a comprehensive database that spans 1️⃣1️⃣ years and includes 6️⃣0️⃣5️⃣ Debt Sustainability Analyses for Low-Income Countries. Our goal is to allow researchers to dig into how debt projections are made and their impact.

buff.ly/4fUxERG The project page includes both a paper and a link to the database.

Starting with one example, we examine how projections of the debt-to-GDP ratio evolve over time. For small developing states, these projections tend to align with reality (on average). In contrast, for larger countries, they tend to underestimate actual developments. For example, Kenya.

This is systematic, especially for non-SIDS. It can be explained in large part by fiscal policy, and to a lesser extent by lower than anticipated growth.

Participating in an IMF program, which alters the nature of the fiscal targets, reduces errors related to external debt, but not to overall public debt.

For more information on these findings and additional insights, refer to the paper. You can then hopefully conduct your own analyses on a variety of variables we collected for the database. Link here 👇 buff.ly/42cyaXX