Control of corruption, public debt and economic growth: An empirical investigation from South Africa

Economic theory posits that government debt, when done at reasonable rates, can foster economic growth, particularly in developing countries. Nonetheless, the heavy burden of government debt faced by many emerging nations poses challenges in fulfilling financial commitments and can impede progress. As a sequel to this, this study evaluates the relationship between control of corruption, public debt and economic growth in South Africa. Data are obtained from the World Development Indicators (WDI, 2022), the study employed the Autoregressive Distributed Lag method (ARDL) to analyse the data. The findings of this study show that public debt significantly hinders economic growth per capita. According to the study, economic growth is unlikely to benefit from the unsustainable buildup of public debt unless corruption is reduced through control of corruption. Therefore, it is recommended to lower government debt by funding suitable infrastructure and preventing corruption to boost economic growth in their country. Since economists have maintained that economic growth is the most effective means of reducing poverty, economic expansion will lower unemployment and poverty on the African continent.