Colbert reports on a recent furor in economics circles: a very influential paper in macroeconomics that turns out to be based on some significant errors. The paper concluded that a debt-to-GDP ratio greater than 90% drastically reduces economic growth, but not only is this hard to explain (and obviously contradicted by economic growth following World War II), it turns out to have been based in considerable part on a computational error in an Excel workbook.

Click here for link.

And here Colbert interviews Thomas Herndon, the grad student who discovered the error:

Link here.

In fairness, it should be noted that there are still people who defend the underlying thesis, though this obviously undercuts their arguments.

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