Impact of Natural Resource Abundance on Public Debt in Developing Countries: Pooled Mean Group (PMG) Approach

Despite the notion that economies with abundant natural resource revenues should have a lower default risk and thus a lower share of public debt, this notion is not generally valid. Natural resources in these countries serve as a guarantee to procure more public loans and binds them in debt trap. In this regard, this article examines the short-term and long-term effects of natural resource rent on public debt in developing countries during 2000-2020. For this purpose, first, a model was designed with the presence of basic variables affecting public debt, along with the variable of share of natural resource rent from GDP, and using panel co-integration tests, the existence of a long-term equilibrium relationship between the variables of the model was confirmed. Finally, the pooled mean group (PMG) approach was used to measure long-term and short-term relationships, and the e Dumitrescu-Hurlin test was used to determine causality. The findings of this research show that the effect of the share of natural resource rent from GDP on public debt is negative (and significant) in the short term and positive (and significant) in the long term. The results of the Dumitrescu-Hurlin test also indicate the existence of a two-way causal relationship between the abundance of natural resources and public debt. Based on this, it can be said that the abundance of natural resources in developing countries leads to higher public debts in the long term, and high levels of public debts also cause rapid extraction of natural resources in these countries.