Is there a country in the world not in debt?

Question

This morning I read the following article:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-49961301

It got me thinking, is there any country in the world not in debt? I am aware that debt is good for a country, but to what extent? I am fairly uneducated in this area so please educate me!

Thanks in advance.

Research in this area is pretty controversial. You want to google debt to GDP ratio (and [putative] effects on growth). See theguardian.com/business/economics-blog/2013/apr/17/… for instance — Fizz, Oct 8 '19 at 7:19
Nevertheless academics still publish quite a bit about it. This slightly more recent paper has been cited a fair bit. Not sure if it's because it's controversial or just accepted. — Fizz, Oct 8 '19 at 7:28
@Fizz why is this area so controversial? Seems like a good subject to educate people on — EcSync, Oct 8 '19 at 7:30
The results are controversial for political reasons. Also establishing causality is never easy in retrospect, so the methodology is complex and prone to criticism. See also doi.org/10.1016/j.iref.2014.09.007 or doi.org/10.1016/j.jpolmod.2015.09.004 (the latter in more extended form: bath.ac.uk/economics/research/working-papers/2017-papers/…) — Fizz, Oct 8 '19 at 7:51
Also "debt overhang" is something you may want to look into e.g. esm.europa.eu/sites/default/files/wp36final.pdf — Fizz, Oct 8 '19 at 7:59

user18user18 · Accepted Answer · 2019-10-08 08:34:29Z

2

According to the World Economic Outlook database (April 2018), in 2018, the "General government net debt" of these countries was negative:

Kazakhstan, Norway, Trinidad and Tobago, Luxembourg, Botswana, Oman, Estonia.

This database doesn't have this datum for Singapore, but I believe the Singapore government also has negative net debt.

answered Oct 8 '19 at 8:34

user18

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