Let me summarize the paper's main finding in plain English: the more spending cuts economists predicted, the worse were their predictions of a country's economi

Let me summarize the paper's main finding in plain English: the more spending cuts economists predicted, the worse were their predictions of a country's economic growth. Slightly more technically: there is a correlation between (a) the magnitude of economists' forecasts of cuts in government spending and (b) the quality of their forecasts of economic growth.† The higher the forecast of spending cuts for a particular country, the farther from reality was the growth forecast. The paper concludes: expected reductions in government spending cause bigger drops in economic output. I leave it to the reader to consider alternative explanations. † — In 26 European countries. Recently. On average.