Government intervention is imperative in the mixed economic system due to market failures, imperfection, pure public goods, and economic externalities to stabilize the economy. We examine the impact of public debt on economic growth. As the role of quality of governance (QoG) is disputed in prior studies, we examine the direct and moderating role of QoG in the context of high-income countries. Whereas analyses are often based on static models along with conventional quantile regression methods not considering the scale and location, we use the method of moment quantile regression (MMQR) by considering the quantile in both scale and location based on heterogeneous panel data from 1990 to 2020. Our empirical investigation shows that public debt promotes economic growth in lower to upper-medium quantiles but is ineffective in top quantiles. The moderating role of QoG on the debt-growth nexus is counterproductive in lower quantiles and insignificant in upper quantiles, which could be the rationale for the tight QoG rules and regulations. The findings also indicate that the effectiveness of the QoG on public debt is crucial for economic growth in high-income countries, while large public debt and too strict rules and regulations of QoG often slow down the growth process in high-income countries. As policy recommendations, governments should adopt prudent public debt management strategies to balance growth stimulation with the avoidance of excessive debt accumulation. Besides, a moderate QoG framework can be prioritized to effectively moderate the relationship between public debt and economic growth to foster sustainable growth trajectories. Graphical Abstract: (Figure presented.).

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Corruption is widely spread and not easy to avoid. Blockchain-based smart contract technology enables the opportunity to develop transactions in such a way that corruption should not be possible. In this paper, we develop and evaluate an arrangement based on blockchain-based smart contracts to avoid and reduce corruption. Smart contracts are used for buying and selling goods, in which the public must agree that the goods arrived and are used to contribute to the creation of societal value. Only then will the supplier be paid. Al transaction data is stored in a blockchain and opened to the public to create transparency. In this way, the price of the good and the sellers can be inspected to avoid price manipulation and nepotism. The smart contract avoids the likelihood that corruption will happen, and it can be spotted if it happens.@en

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) supports the sharing of information to improve the Quality of Governance (QoG). Many studies found a relationship between ICT diffusion and globalization and between ICT diffusion and the Quality of Governance. This study investigates the influence of both ICT diffusion and globalization in explaining the country level QoG while incorporating gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, human capital, and government expenditure in the context of the ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nation) region. To this end, we used Panel Autoregressive Distributed Lags (ARDL) to analyze panel data from 1984 to 2017. In contrast to research conducted in other countries, our research shows that the impact of ICT diffusion on QoG is not significant in the ASEAN region. The findings can be explained by a lack of coherent ICT-strategy among the countries and a lack of institutional mechanisms to ensure ICT efforts’ effectiveness. However, the relationship between globalization and QoG is positive and significant.@en