The aim of this study is to find out the time-series nexus of public debt and economic growth in Malaysia. For an upper-middle income country, Malaysia had experienced over 50% ratio of debt to GDP since 2009 until now. The question arises is whether this trend is healthy to the economy. With a focus into the debt-to-GDP ratio from 1970-2015, this study investigates the short-run and long-run relationship between public debt and economic growth in Malaysia. This study used secondary data by

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... ecting time-series data from the World Bank Data and Bank Negara Malaysia. Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model is applied in this study to examine the relationship between debt and economic growth. Based on ARDL framework, it shows that there is a long-run effect between the debt and economic growth in Malaysia. While the significance value of Error Correction Term shows that there is a long-run adjustment in the short run. Generally, this study found government expenditures, in the long run, strongly influence the GDP per capita. Through the findings, the government expenditures could increase the GDP per capita. The study also reveals that any increment of the debt ratio will result in reduction of the GDP per capita. JEL Classification Code: C32, H50, H63, O47 of debt ratio, then to the peak or climax in history and the failing of debt ratio. The financial crisis in 1997 and the subprime financial crisis also will be highlighted in the study. In the beginning of 1970, the debt ratio was 40.8% of the GDP in Malaysia and we could see that there is an increase for two consecutive years, which crosses the mark of 50%. However, there is a slight decrease for the next two years, but it increased to 51%. During the next five years (1975)(1976)(1977)(1978)(1979)(1980), the debt ratio has been in the range of 44%-48%. There are no significant changes in this time frame. Furthermore, from 1981 onwards, the debt ratio has been going up by breaking the record since 1970. It has increase from 54% to 66.9%, then until 73.4% before it fell slightly in 1984 1985 onwards, the debt ratio in Malaysia is remarkably high, which it exceeded 100% for two years in a row. After 1987, the debt ratio fell for the next 10 years and it reached 31.9%, which is the lowest ratio ever recorded. The debt ratio has undergone a huge increase and then a downward trend in these 17 years. The debt ratio fluctuates around 40% from 1998 until 2008. In 2009, the debt ratio increased drastically from 39.8% to 50.8% and it fluctuated around 50%. For the past five years, the highest debt ratio recorded was 54.5% in 2015.