Title: External debt and economic growth in Tunisia
Abstract: This paper investigates the external debt effect on economic growth in Tunisia. Our empirical methodology is based on the autoregressive distributed lag approach. We find that in the long- as well as in the short-run, external debt had a negative effect on growth over the 1970-2010 period. The longrun effect was slightly higher in the period before the Ben Ali?s presidency than in the period after. However, during his period, the external debt short-run effect was the double of that observed during the period before. These results suggest that an external debt reduction should favor economic growth in Tunisia.