Calhoun, Gray
WP #15014, July 2015
We reexamine the Reinhart and Rogoff (2010, AER) government debt dataset and present graphical evidence that supports the hypothesis that periods of slow economic growth cause debt levels to rise. In particular, low growth periods are clustered temporally, suggesting a common cause; low growth rates predict an increase in debt, even after conditioning on the debt level; and countries with high debt levels grow at roughly the same rate as those with low debt levels when we compare countries at similar points in time.
JEL Classification: E6, F4