Debt, economic growth, and interest rates: an empirical study of the Swiss case, presenting a new long-term dataset: 1894–2014

Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics

Table 1 Top: Pearson correlation coefficients between debt-to-GDP ratio and GDP growth rate for boom phases, recession phases and all data. Bottom: Pearson correlation coefficients between debt-to-GDP ratio and long-term interest rates for boom phases, recession phases and all data. Italics: significant results with 5% level

	B_t = 1		B_t = 0		B_t = 1 or B_t = 0
c	\( \mathrm{cor}\left({D}_t^p,{G}_{t+c}^p\right) \)	p value	\( \mathrm{cor}\left({D}_t^p,{G}_{t+c}^p\right) \)	p value	\( \mathrm{cor}\left({D}_t^p,{G}_{t+c}^p\right) \)	p value
− 5	0.269	0.038	0.379	0.164	− 0.112	0.235
− 4	0.284	0.022	0.373	0.115	− 0.129	0.166
− 3	0.255	0.033	0.276	0.203	− 0.118	0.206
− 2	0.227	0.051	0.158	0.431	− 0.105	0.258
− 1	0.223	0.047	0.130	0.484	− 0.084	0.366
0	0.255	0.019	0.038	0.829	− 0.006	0.949
1	0.318	0.004	0.177	0.340	0.145	0.116
2	0.100	0.392	0.016	0.936	0.131	0.159
3	0.023	0.849	0.086	0.696	0.123	0.185
4	0.034	0.791	0.133	0.588	0.116	0.217
5	0.222	0.088	0.129	0.648	0.153	0.102
c	\( \mathrm{cor}\left({D}_t^p,{O}_{t+c}\right) \)	p value	\( \mathrm{cor}\left({D}_t^p,{O}_{t+c}\right) \)	p value	\( \mathrm{cor}\left({D}_t^p,{O}_{t+c}\right) \)	p value
− 5	− 0.185	0.153	− 0.762	0.001	0.025	0.791
− 4	− 0.145	0.246	− 0.785	0.000	− 0.003	0.977
− 3	− 0.124	0.305	− 0.768	0.000	− 0.028	0.762
− 2	− 0.101	0.386	− 0.730	0.000	− 0.050	0.588
− 1	− 0.109	0.334	− 0.624	0.000	− 0.092	0.315
0	− 0.128	0.240	− 0.621	0.000	− 0.146	0.110
1	− 0.145	0.196	− 0.650	0.000	− 0.203	0.027
2	− 0.143	0.217	− 0.606	0.001	− 0.241	0.008
3	− 0.169	0.158	− 0.569	0.005	− 0.271	0.003
4	− 0.223	0.072	− 0.499	0.030	− 0.303	0.001
5	− 0.256	0.046	− 0.534	0.040	− 0.338	0.000