Public Debt Service, Interest Rates and Fiscal Variables in Transition Countries

The prevailing view in the literature is that the cost of debt servicing depends on the variables that determine the debt dynamics: primary balance, outstanding debt, economic growth and inflation. Several papers devoted to advanced market economies show that a stronger primary balance is associated with a lower cost of debt servicing. The interest cost of servicing the public debt is key both to its sustainability and to the burden it places on the public finances and the economy. A panel of four transition economies: the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia in the time period 1994 -2002 has been analyzed. The question is if also in these countries much of the variation in the costs of servicing public debt can be explained in terms of fundamentals that determine the debt dynamics. Last but not least country-specific effects are discussed.