TY - JOUR U1 - Wissenschaftlicher Artikel A1 - Herzog, Bodo A1 - Dausch, Larissa T1 - Public debt sustainability in Europe and leading countries JF - Journal of empirical economics N2 - We investigate public debt sustainability in Europe and leading industrialised countries. The recent debate about the debt ceiling in the US and the sovereign debt crisis in Europe demonstrate the urgency of the topic. We measure debt sustainability of public finance with a standard and alternative methodology and compare both results. We use panel data of 205 OECD countries from 1970 to 2014. The paper finds unsustainable public debt levels for almost all countries in the past decades. Furthermore, given the low economic growth and demographic challenge ahead, debt levels may upsurge even more. There is a huge looming ‘debt meltdown’ on the horizon if countries do not change public policy soon. KW - public debt sustainability KW - European debt crisis KW - measurement of sustainability Y1 - 2015 U6 - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:bsz:rt2-opus4-4971 UN - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:bsz:rt2-opus4-4971 UR - http://www.rassweb.com/archive-details-vol-4-issue-4-jee/ SN - 2310-3280 SS - 2310-3280 VL - 4 IS - 4 SP - 207 EP - 215 S1 - 9 PB - Research Academy of Social Sciences CY - Karachi ER -