The stylized facts of public indebtedness after the Bretton Woods collapse: Global evidence

Abstract

In this paper, we have constructed a secondary Global Public Debt Database (GPDD) for 1971-2021. In particular, the paper presents detailed stylized facts regarding the public debt indebtedness of the central government in the case of sixty-seven advanced, emerging, low-income and developing economies after the collapse of Bretton Woods. The paper provides a comprehensive literature review of previous contributions centered around public debt sustainability analysis from the perspective of the intertemporal government budget constraint (IGBC) violation. Our results show a higher degree of public debt persistence in the case of advanced economies compared to emerging, low-income and developing economies. We also find that the most indebted countries have the most volatile public debt/GDP ratios.