The Impact of External Debts on Economic Growth in Iran

The budget deficit policy is one of the fiscal policy instruments for eliminating the shortage of government revenues and achieving targeted economic growth in many countries. In recent years, for various economic problems in Iran, governments get some parts of the budget deficit from different sources. Foreign borrowing is one of the sources of deficit financing and the ways of using it may have positive and negative effects on economic growth. In this paper the empirical relationship between budget deficit and economic growth of Iran in the period 1980-2011 is analyzed in long and short run applying Johansen and Juselius co-integration method and vector error correction model (VECM). Results suggest that the impact of external debt on economic growth is negative and significant in the long run and short run. Thus, the optimal foreign borrowing and the other sources of deficit financing should be used for increasing employment and the high efficiency projects and the ability to pay foreign and domestic debts are necessary for achieving the targeted growth.