Commodity Windfalls, Democracy and External Debt

We examine the effects that windfalls from international commodity price booms have on external debt in a panel of 93 countries during the period 1970–2007. Our main finding is that increases in the international prices of exported commodity goods lead to a significant reduction the level of external debt in democracies but to no significant reduction in the level of external debt in autocracies. To explain this finding, we show that in autocracies commodity windfalls lead to a statistically significant and quantitatively large increase in government consumption expenditures. In democracies government consumption expenditures did not increase significantly.