Modeling Inflation, Public Debt, and Exchange Rate Dynamics in Small Open Economies: A Systematic Review and Bibliometric Synthesis

Introduction: Small open economies struggle to simultaneously control inflation, manage public debt, and stabilize foreign exchange rates. Although researchers have deployed diverse econometric toolkits to model this macroeconomic nexus, the applied literature remains methodologically fragmented, lacking a systematic synthesis of model choices, geographic focus, and reporting quality.

Methods: This systematic review executed a PRISMA-guided Python 3,12 script to search for studies across OpenAlex, CrossRef, and Semantic Scholar (1970–2026). This was supplemented with a manual search to retrieve studies indexed in Web of Science, Scopus and Google Scholar. Screening 1,122 raw records through a quota-balanced sampling protocol yielded a synthesized corpus of 120 studies across eight econometric families. The corpus was categorized geographically into Ghana-anchored (38.3%), Sub-Saharan Africa/small open economies (36.7%), foundational methodological (18.3%), and other emerging markets (6.7%). Automated full-text text-mining proxies assessed reporting transparency, while a citation-velocity funnel regression evaluated visibility asymmetry.

Results: Autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL/NARDL) bounds-testing is the most prevalent primary model family (18.3%), followed by DSGE/NKPC (13.3%) and ECM/VECM (12.5%), with a notable post-2017 shift toward asymmetric and time-varying specifications. Full-text transparency varies sharply: only 6.2% of DSGE studies explicitly state a sample period, compared to 52.0% of ARDL studies, and fewer than 30% of studies in any family report explicit diagnostic checks. A statistically significant citation funnel asymmetry (Egger-style slope = −1.27, p = 0.005) reveals that older, foundational methodological papers receive disproportionate citation visibility over recent regional applied studies.

Discussion: The field lacks a standardized evidence base. Reduced-form ARDL/NARDL and ECM/VECM frameworks offer the most immediate baseline for future quantitative meta-analyses. Finally, this review delivers a data-driven decision framework to guide model selection in small open economies.