Two new studies further debunking the work of austerity economists
Reinhart and Rogoff, who falsely linked high debt to slow growth,
are now out:
In a post at Quartz,
University of Michigan economics professor Miles Kimball and University
of Michigan undergraduate student Yichuan Wang write that they have
crunched Reinhart and Rogoff's data and found "not even a shred of
evidence" that high debt levels lead to slower economic growth.
And a new paper by University of Massachusetts professor Arindrajit Dube finds evidence that Reinhart and Rogoff had the relationship between growth and debt backwards: Slow growth appears to cause higher debt, if anything.
As it's said, a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on. In this case, it's taken three years for those pants to get on.
