<p>In Reinhart and Rogoff (2010), the authors purported to have found empirical evidence that going over the 90% of public debt threshold was harmful for the country. However, in 2013 (I think), after reviewing their Excel calculations, and correcting a mistake, it was found that their conclusion was no longer warranted.</p>
<p>I would say that one bird does not constitute spring, but for example in <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1946170" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Cecchetti, Mohanty, and Zampolli (2011)</a>, and <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1653188" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Woo(2010)</a>, similar negative outlooks are produced after reviewing the empirical data.</p>
<p>Are these, and similar 'minded' studies also tainted by the same, or a similar mistake?</p>
<p>Part of my motivation for this question comes from the apparent - at least to me, but I may be wrong, though... - nowadays mainstream position that debt level and GDP are not so easily correlated, and that their relationship is much harder than a simple 90% threshold. How did the public debate change so much, even though there were other studies supporting similar conclusions, or the position of less debt equal (much) higher growth?</p>

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2021-04-03T21:50:47.343Z
It sure what you mean by tainted by same mistake. In R&R they literally made a ‘typo’ where all countries before some letter in the alphabet (forgot which one) were excluded from the analysis - that was quite a huge and embarrassing mistake - and such mistakes are not common that’s why it was also such scandal. There was questions about this and I have answer on that on SE but I can’t find it now. Literature indeed shows high debt can be dangerous but it’s conditional on other factors and the 90% threshold was discredited there is no magic number but new research does not rely on R&R results
1muflon1
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2021-04-03T22:30:13.103Z
https://umassmed.edu/globalassets/quantitative-health-sciences/files/camb.-j.-econ.-2013-herndon-cje-bet075.pdf @1muflon1 in this link, there's a paper where the original researchers who found the initial mistake show that there were other much worse, namely the weighting used to create the means and medians in each category of debt level. The mistake of the exclusion was not what made it such a scandal from reading this paper. The scandal came from the RR paper being highly cited, in newspapers, journals, even in political candidates political programmes,and found to contain structural error.
An old man in the sea.
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2021-04-04T08:33:38.943Z
@1muflon1 I've added the motivation for this question of mine. ;)
An old man in the sea.
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2021-04-04T10:47:52.517Z
Personally, I consider it more scandalous that the peer-review process of AER obviously failed. However, and that is the more critical point for me, is the fact that the authors who fund the failures in the R&R article could not publish their refutation in AER. Bases AER their acceptance decision like a tabloid on the most lurid headlines?
Holger I. Meinhardt
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2021-04-04T14:19:11.487Z
@HolgerI.Meinhardt that was indeed very bad but note AEA now requires all authors to publish their data and code and to be fair other papers across whole social science even in psychology had similar issues even decades ago but thankfully things are progressing after the various papers on replication crises brought light on these issues
1muflon1
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2021-04-04T15:26:12.587Z
@1muflon1 This is the least what one should expect from AEA, and these are very important policies to restore confidence. Nevertheless, in my opinion, the editors still cope out from their main decision to withdraw the R&R article. It was established that the deficiencies invalids the whole article, so I am wondering that is still possible to download this faulty article without an editorial note.
Holger I. Meinhardt
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2021-04-04T17:05:51.007Z
@HolgerI.Meinhardt Yes, I was surprised that there was no notice warning the oblivious on the fault in the paper...  That's really bad. I think they're probably hopping that the affair will be forgotten soon... However, I doubt that.
An old man in the sea.
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2021-04-04T17:20:34.643Z
https://www.cc.com/video/dcyvro/the-colbert-report-austerity-s-spreadsheet-error?source=Patrick.net
An old man in the sea.
<macroeconomics><international-economics><public-debt>
Is Reinhart and Rogoff mistake also present in similar 'minded' studies?
An old man in the sea.
# Is Reinhart and Rogoff mistake also present in similar 'minded' studies?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2021-04-03)

In Reinhart and Rogoff (2010), the authors purported to have found empirical evidence that going over the 90% of public debt threshold was harmful for the country. However, in 2013 (I think), after reviewing their Excel calculations, and correcting a mistake, it was found that their conclusion was no longer warranted.

I would say that one bird does not constitute spring, but for example in [Cecchetti, Mohanty, and Zampolli (2011)](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1946170), and [Woo(2010)](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1653188), similar negative outlooks are produced after reviewing the empirical data.

Are these, and similar 'minded' studies also tainted by the same, or a similar mistake?

Part of my motivation for this question comes from the apparent - at least to me, but I may be wrong, though... - nowadays mainstream position that debt level and GDP are not so easily correlated, and that their relationship is much harder than a simple 90% threshold. How did the public debate change so much, even though there were other studies supporting similar conclusions, or the position of less debt equal (much) higher growth?

**Tags:** macroeconomics, international-economics, public-debt

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: It sure what you mean by tainted by same mistake. In R&R they literally made a ‘typo’ where all countries before some letter in the alphabet (forgot which one) were excluded from the analysis - that was quite a huge and embarrassing mistake - and such mistakes are not common that’s why it was also such scandal. There was questions about this and I have answer on that on SE but I can’t find it now. Literature indeed shows high debt can be dangerous but it’s conditional on other factors and the 90% threshold was discredited there is no magic number but new research does not rely on R&R results  
> **username_0**: https://umassmed.edu/globalassets/quantitative-health-sciences/files/camb.-j.-econ.-2013-herndon-cje-bet075.pdf @username_1 in this link, there's a paper where the original researchers who found the initial mistake show that there were other much worse, namely the weighting used to create the means and medians in each category of debt level. The mistake of the exclusion was not what made it such a scandal from reading this paper. The scandal came from the RR paper being highly cited, in newspapers, journals, even in political candidates political programmes,and found to contain structural error.  
> **username_0**: @username_1 I've added the motivation for this question of mine. ;)  
> **username_2**: Personally, I consider it more scandalous that the peer-review process of AER obviously failed. However, and that is the more critical point for me, is the fact that the authors who fund the failures in the R&R article could not publish their refutation in AER. Bases AER their acceptance decision like a tabloid on the most lurid headlines?  
> **username_1**: @HolgerI.Meinhardt that was indeed very bad but note AEA now requires all authors to publish their data and code and to be fair other papers across whole social science even in psychology had similar issues even decades ago but thankfully things are progressing after the various papers on replication crises brought light on these issues  
> **username_2**: @username_1 This is the least what one should expect from AEA, and these are very important policies to restore confidence. Nevertheless, in my opinion, the editors still cope out from their main decision to withdraw the R&R article. It was established that the deficiencies invalids the whole article, so I am wondering that is still possible to download this faulty article without an editorial note.  
> **username_0**: @HolgerI.Meinhardt Yes, I was surprised that there was no notice warning the oblivious on the fault in the paper...  That's really bad. I think they're probably hopping that the affair will be forgotten soon... However, I doubt that.  
> **username_0**: https://www.cc.com/video/dcyvro/the-colbert-report-austerity-s-spreadsheet-error?source=Patrick.net  

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## 0 answers

