Thomas Herndon

Thomas Herndon(U Mass, Amherst) visit to CPaT.  Students were asked to come prepared for Thomas Hearndon’s Talk:

  1. read both his (now) famous paper: – Does High Public Debt Consistently Stifle EconomicGrowth? A Critique of Reinhart and Rogo (Herndon, Ash, Pollin, U.Mass Political Economy Research Institute, Working Paper Series, April 15, 2013), and the
  2. (Wikipedia) Summary of the Paper he found fault with (Growth in a Time of Debt).

You might want to:

  1. Read the wikipedia article citing a New York Times assessment by Paul Krugman:  The Excel Depression.
  2. start by watching the Real News video and Stephen Colbert Video interview1 and interview2  with Herndon.

More Background: During week 4 of the quarter, Evergreen faculty Zoltan Grossman, pointed out to faculty in an email on 4/18/2013, that Evergreen graduate Thomas Herndon, now a U. Mass-Amherst Economics doctoral student, recently caught glaring errors in data published by two eminent Harvard economists (associated with the IMF and pumped up by Paul Ryan). The Reuters article is about how he single handedly discredited the thrust of their analysis on debt. Thomas was the TA in an Evergreen Political Economy and Social Movements program in 06-07, and we’re quite proud of his accomplishments.   Those of us in stats should note that the original authors admitted to a coding error in the spreadsheet.