This paper exploits a panel dataset for 26 EU countries, between 1995 and 2015, to examine the extent to which increased levels of public debt have led to reduced public investment, the so-called ‘debt overhang' hypothesis. To address endogeneity concerns, we use an instrumental variable...

Understanding how public investment affects economic performance in highly indebted low-income countries is crucial in order to implement effective fiscal policies for adjustment with growth. In this paper we provide an empirical analysis to investigate the relationship between public...

The question of how scaling up public investment could affect fiscal and debt sustainability is key for countries needing to fill infrastructure gaps and build resilience. This paper proposes a bottom-up approach to assess large public investments that are potentially self-financing and reflect...