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I think they were. Speaking as someone who is generally pro-austerity, I think R&R concluded that after 90% debt/GDP there was major drop-off in GDP growth. The

by bhb916 13y ago

I think they were. Speaking as someone who is generally pro-austerity, I think R&R concluded that after 90% debt/GDP there was major drop-off in GDP growth. The corrections all but destroy this assertion. That's not to say that debt and GDP growth aren't inversely proportional/correlated -- just that there is no magic level that changes the relationship substantially. Honestly, there are so many variables and dimensions in this system and so little data I'm not sure we should ever be drawing sweeping conclusions like this.

SilasX 13y ago
>I think they were. Speaking as someone who is generally pro-austerity, I think R&R concluded that after 90% debt/GDP there was major drop-off in GDP growth. That doesn't mean they were asserting what the grad students claim, that the falloff in growth is unavoidable, which sounds like an extreme strawman.
- yyqux 13y ago
  R&R's defense strategy seems currently to pretend that they weren't claiming anything in particular by the paper originally: "hey man, I was just putting it out there. I didn't, like, mean anything by it." But their own public pronouncements, and the way they responded to other's interpretations of the results, pretty much indicated that they though they'd found firm evidence that there was some big non-linearity at 90%.
  - SilasX 13y ago
    I'm not claiming R/R are saints. I'm just objecting to ridiculous strawman implied by: "We show that, contrary to R&R, there is no definitive threshold for the public debt/GDP ratio, beyond which countries will invariably suffer a major decline in GDP growth." RR's claim is entirely statistical, so of course they're not going to claim that exceeding the ratio always ("invariably") leads to a major decline in growth. RR's being wrong doesn't mean it's okay to insinuate they hold ridiculous positions that they really don't. That's just compounding public misconceptions.
    - pseut 13y ago
      Have you been following RR's op-eds, etc over the last two years? I have the impression that they've been less circumspect than you claim.
      - SilasX 13y ago
        "X carries too much/undesirable risk of Y" != "X unavoidably leads to Y" The former is what RR said, the latter is the strawman being attributed to them.

by bhb916 13y ago

SilasX 13y ago

>I think they were. Speaking as someone who is generally pro-austerity, I think R&R concluded that after 90% debt/GDP there was major drop-off in GDP growth. That doesn't mean they were asserting what the grad students claim, that the falloff in growth is unavoidable, which sounds like an extreme strawman.

yyqux 13y ago
R&R's defense strategy seems currently to pretend that they weren't claiming anything in particular by the paper originally: "hey man, I was just putting it out there. I didn't, like, mean anything by it." But their own public pronouncements, and the way they responded to other's interpretations of the results, pretty much indicated that they though they'd found firm evidence that there was some big non-linearity at 90%.
- SilasX 13y ago
  I'm not claiming R/R are saints. I'm just objecting to ridiculous strawman implied by: "We show that, contrary to R&R, there is no definitive threshold for the public debt/GDP ratio, beyond which countries will invariably suffer a major decline in GDP growth." RR's claim is entirely statistical, so of course they're not going to claim that exceeding the ratio always ("invariably") leads to a major decline in growth. RR's being wrong doesn't mean it's okay to insinuate they hold ridiculous positions that they really don't. That's just compounding public misconceptions.
  - pseut 13y ago
    Have you been following RR's op-eds, etc over the last two years? I have the impression that they've been less circumspect than you claim.
    - SilasX 13y ago
      "X carries too much/undesirable risk of Y" != "X unavoidably leads to Y" The former is what RR said, the latter is the strawman being attributed to them.