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In addition to their excel errors, their analysis required excluding the Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. Once these countries were included in their analysis, their argument falls apart. To me, it's clear that this was a case of very selective researcher degrees of freedom to support austerity. Why anyone would take Reinhart or Rogoff seriously after this farce is beyond my comprehension.

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> their analysis required excluding the Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. Once these countries were included in their analysis, their argument falls apart

Unsure on Oz and Canada. But New Zealand was excluded due to gaps in R&R's data at time of their first paper's publication. They "fully integrated the New Zealand data back to the early 1800s" as well as for "every major high debt episode for advanced countries since 1800" for their 2012 paper [1].

The effect size that Herndon et al found is "growth at high debt levels" being "a little more than half of the growth rate at the lowest levels." R&R's 2012 paper finds an even more-muted result: "2.4% for high debt versus 3.5% for below 90%."

[1] https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013...

It's almost like there are people who are eager to force austerity whether or not it works!

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