A version of this material originally appeared in the Financial Times on 26 February 2020.
The debt burdens carried by emerging markets have become a regular feature of reports on threats to financial stability. The total debt for 30 large EM countries reached $72.5tn in 2019, a 168 percent rise over the past 10 years, according to BIS data. This figure certainly merits watching. But a deeper analysis of the numbers suggests a more nuanced and less worrisome picture.
The $73tn figure includes Hong Kong and Singapore, which are small, wealthy economies that should probably