Özet:
In the wake of the recent financial crisis and after the
accumulation of sizeable public debts, especially in the emerging Middle East
and North Africa (MENA) economies, the financial distress of the public sector
has become a major source of concern for policymakers in the region. The
conduct of uncontrolled exchange rate and undisciplined fiscal policies in small
scale Mena economies has recently become critical in determining these
countries’ future economic and fiscal situation, due to the accumulation of a
sizable level of external debt since early 1990s. Statistical and econometric
analysis supports the view that the current fiscal framework addressed debt
sustainability concerns, but imparted a pro-cyclical bias, which contributed to
economic divergence. The subject of this paper is the examination of
convergence of debt service on external debt of MENA countries. The paper
launches the data of a period between 1970 and 2013 for MENA economies of
Lebanon, Morocco, Tunisia and Turkey. This paper employs Threshold
Autoregressive (TAR) panel unit root test to examine the stationarity of the
series. Finally, the paper reveals that there is a full convergence for panel in
both regimes