The role of socio-political factors in public debt accumulation: Evidence from CEMAC countries

Abstract

The analysis of public debt determinants is well documented in the literature. However, previous studies give more focus to the economic determinants neglecting the role played by socio-political factors. The purpose of this study is to fill that gap observed in the literature by investigating the impact of socio-political factors on CEMAC countries' public debt accumulation in a bivariate relationship. The paper employs the OLS and GLS as baseline models using panel data covering the period from 1980 to 2021. The study uses as alternative techniques the FE, FE-IV, and the GMM for robustness checks. The empirical findings highlight the system (both presidential and legislative), corruption, Electoral openness and Competitiveness for legislative election (Liec), and fraud as the main driving factors of public debt in CEMAC countries. This paper suggests further studies to give a particular interest to socio-political factors while investigating the determinants of public debt in developing countries.