Download or read book Debt Sustainability Analyses for Low-Income Countries: An Assessment of Projection Performance written by Mr.Henry Mooney and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2017-10-30 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper develops new error assessment methods to evaluate the performance of debt sustainability analyses (DSAs) for low-income countries (LICs) from 2005-2015. We find some evidence of a bias towards optimism for public and external debt projections, which was most appreciable for LICs with the highest incomes, prospects for market access, and at ‘moderate’ risk of debt distress. This was often driven by overly-ambitious fiscal and/or growth forecasts, and projected ‘residuals’. When we control for unanticipated shocks, we find that biases remain evident, driven in part by optimism regarding government fiscal reaction functions and expected growth dividends from investment.