Quick Thoughts on Reinhart and Rogoff's Response

Carmen Reinhart and Ken Rogoff (R&R) responded to the paper I noted earlier by Thomas Herndon, Michael Ash, and Robert Pollin (HAP), which showed that their famous result associating high debt levels with slow growth was driven by spreadsheet errors. The gist of the response is that HAP also find that high debt is associated with slower growth, and that other studies (including one of theirs) found the same result anyhow.

The first point is highly misleading. It is true that in most of th...