Missing the Bigger Picture in the Reinhart & Rogoff Debate
Missing the Bigger Picture in the Reinhart & Rogoff Debate The Big Picture The "Excel Spreadsheet Error" In Context You've heard that an incredibly influential economic paper by Reinhart and Rogoff (RR) – widely used to justify austerity – has been "busted" for "excel spreadsheet errors" and other flaws. As Google Trends shows, there is a raging debate over the errors in RR's report: Even Colbert is making fun of them . Liberal economists argue that the "debunking" of RR proves that debt doesn't matter, and that conservative economists who say it does are liars and scoundrels. Conservative economists argue that the Habsburg, British and French empires crumbled under the weight of high debt, and that many other economists – including Niall Ferguson, the IMF and others – agree that high debt destroys economies. RR attempted to defend their work yesterday: Researchers at the Bank of Internati...