A critique of Carmen Reinhart and Ken Rogoff’s paper examining debt’s effect on growth dominated the economic news over the last week. Reinhart and Rogoff’s 2010 offering, Growth in a Time of Debt, compiled lots of data on debt-to-GDP ratios from nations around the globe and found that higher debt ratios, especially those at 90% or above, tended to be associated with slower growth. Three UMass-Amherst economists, however, noticed an error in R&R’s spreadsheet and argued that it (along with two other statistical choices) significantly altered the results. R&R acknowledged the spreadsheet error in a reply but defended the thrust of their work and its conclusions.

Champions of government spending jumped on the critique, charging that the R&R paper had given aid and comfort to widespread “austerity” policies and that their now-discredited ideas had sunk the world economy. They dubbed it “The Excel Depression.”

Others who have reviewed all the evidence, however, found R&R’s research holds up rather well. Harvard’s Greg Mankiw basically agrees and thinks

The coding error in Reinhart and Rogoff has gotten a lot more media attention than it deserves.

Then there is the entertaining contrarian Nassim Nicholas Taleb, who, in a tweet, goes further:

The coding error, I agree, is not remotely dispositive in this very big debate. So where does that leave us? We’ve still got these enormous debts, slow growth, and a still-yawning intellectual chasm on all the big public finance and monetary policy issues. As some have pointed out, a problem with this type of research is causation. Even if R&R are correct about the correlation, in other words, does high debt cause slow growth, or does slow growth cause high debt? These questions really get to the heart of economics and, like Taleb, I’m skeptical conventional macro is very enlightening.

We’ve been debating these very topics for centuries, or millennia. In The History of England, for example, Thomas Babington Macaulay reminded us of his nation’s apparently insurmountable debts following the interminable wars of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.*

When the great contest with Lewis the Fourteenth was finally terminated by the Peace of Utrecht the nation owed about fifty million; and that debt was considered not merely by the rude multitude, not merely by fox hunting squires and coffee-house orators, but by acute and profound thinkers, as an encumbrance which would permanently cripple the body politic . . . .

Soon war again broke forth; and under the energetic and prodigal administration of the first William Pitt, the debt rapidly swelled to a hundred and forty million. As soon as the first intoxication of victory was over, men of theory and men of business almost unanimously pronounced that the fatal day had now really arrived.

David Hume said the nation’s madness exceeded that of the Crusades. Among the intellectuals, only Edmund Burke demurred. “Adam Smith,” Macaulay continued,

saw a little, and but a little further. He admitted that, immense as the pressure was, the nation did actually sustain it and thrive. . . . But he warned his countrymen even a small increase [in debt] might be fatal.

Thus Britain’s attempt to tax its American colonies to pay down its debts. And thus another war — the Revolutionary — and thus another 100 million in new debts. More wars stemming from the French Revolution pushed Britain’s debts to 800 million, surely beyond any possibility of repayment.

Yet like Addison’s valetudinarian, who continued to whimper that he was dying of consumption till he became sofat that he was shamed into silence, [England] went on complaining that she was sunk in poverty till her wealth showed itself by tokens which made her complaints ridiculous . . . .

The beggared, the bankrupt society not only proved able to meet all its obligations, but while meeting these obligations, grew richer and richer so fast that the growth could almost be discerned by the eye . . . . While shallow politicians were repeating that the energies of the people were borne down by the weight of public burdens, the first journey was performed by steam on a railway. Soon the island was intersected by railways. A sum exceeding the whole amount of he national debt at the end of the American war was, in a few years, voluntarily expended by this ruined people on viaducts, tunnels, embankments, bridges, stations, engines. Meanwhile, taxation was almost constantly becoming lighter and lighter, yet still the Exchequer was full . . . .

Macaulay pinpointed the chief defect in the thinking of the alarmists.

They made no allowance for the effect produced by the incessant progress of every experimental science, and by the incessant effort of every man to get on in life. They saw that the debt grew and they forgot that other things grew as well as the debt.

Does this mean the spendthrifts are right? That we can — indeed, should — spend our way out of our predicaments, without much regard for the growing debt?

No.

A defect of the debt alarmists may be their curmudgeonly suspicion that budget imbalances always drive the economy downward. An even more egregious defect of the debt apologists, however, is their assumption that budget imbalances lift the economy upward and that spending is equal to growth, rather than a result of growth. The debt alarmists too often forget the possibilities of human achievement that are the basis for wealth. The debt apologists, however, assume wealth is inevitable, that it can be redistributed, and that their policies will have no harmful impact on wealth creation. The crucial point in Macaulay is not that any nation can sustain growing debts but that vibrantly growing economies (like that of the scientifically-advanced, exploratory, industrial British Empire) can sustain debts in larger amounts than is commonly assumed.

The debt alarmists, moreover, play into the hands of the spendthrifts. By making budget balance their sine qua non of policy, they equate spending restraint with tax increases. The spendthrifts say “fine, if budget balance is so important, let’s raise taxes.” Never mind the possible negative growth effects of higher tax rates (and regulations and the like). This is what has happened in much of Europe and now to some extent in the U.S. An obsession with debt too often impels policies that slow economic growth — real economic growth, based on productivity and innovation, not spending — thus greatly exacerbating the burden of debt. And make no mistake, the burdens of debt are real. Defaults, inflations, and bankruptcies happen. If interest rates rise several percentage points, the U.S. might be paying hundreds of billions more in interest. And this is why the shortened term structure of our debt is an even bigger concern. We should have been locking in very long terms at these historically low rates.

Like the British Empire, with its pound sterling, the U.S. has a great advantage in the dollar’s status as world reserve currency. We are probably able to sustain higher debts than would otherwise be the case because our debts are in our own currency and the safe haven status of Treasurys. Yet, how did the pound sterling or the dollar achieve reserve status? Through powerful economic growth of the currencies’ issuers.

In the current growth and policy environment, America’s debts are a substantial worry. Yet no policy should focus first on debt. We should ask whether each policy encourages or discourages entrepreneurship and real productivity enhancements. And whether each spending program is legitimate, effective, and efficient. If policy were driven, more often than not, by thoughtful answers to these questions, then the debt question would answer itself. Our debt ratio would likely decline, yet the amount of debt our economy could sustain would rise.

Here is David Malpass concisely making the point on CNBC:

— Bret Swanson

* Macaulay quotes from George Gilder’s book Wealth & Poverty.

Brink Lindsey of the Kauffman Foundation summarizes a new paper on the imperative of constantly exploring the economic frontier:

This tax-and-budget analysis from Bruce Bartlett is wrong on many levels — in both its particulars and its overall sweep.

Bartlett claims the famous supply-side tax-cutters at The Wall Street Journal editorial page have, in a major reversal, opened the door to a Value Added Tax and thus a major expansion of overall taxation and American government. He thinks a new Journal opinion article from Columbia Business School dean Glenn Hubbard represents a big shift in the thinking of economic conservatives. I don’t see it that way at all. (more…)

What is the optimal economic arrangement to produce innovation and growth? And what is the optimal political arrangement needed to encourage and sustain such an economic order? I spend a lot of time thinking about these questions (as here in a paper on the rise of China). And so I’d recommend this thoughtful blog post by economist Scott Sumner. Sumner’s been blogging a lot on his recent trip to China and on the macroeconomics of the financial crisis/recession/rebound.

I disagree with a number of Sumner’s conclusions on the macro and political-economy fronts, but it’s insights like the one below that keep me reading Sumner.

Switzerland’s high level of democracy doesn’t just come from referenda, it also comes from its extreme decentralization.  This makes it a highly successful multiethnic society, and not just when compared to places like Yugoslavia and Iraq, but even in comparison to Belgium or Canada.  Another advantage of decentralization is that small places are less likely to be protectionist, as the gains from trade are much more obvious.  In addition, it is much easier to monitor and root out rent seekers in a community where most people know each other.

Stanford economist Paul Romer has had lots of good ideas over the years. Particularly his ideas about the importance of ideas in the economy. But his “Charter City” idea explored at the recent TED conference is one of the best yet.

Maybe I like it so much because it so closely tracks the concepts offered in my long paper of last August called “Entrepreneurship and Innovation in China – 1978-2008 – Thirty Years of Decentralized Economic Growth”, a follow-on article in The Wall Street Journal, and a previous essay “Breaking Metcalfe’s Law” on the economic importance of the exchange of ideas.

Romer uses China’s “free zones” envisioned by Deng Xiaoping and initially implemented by one Jiang Zemin as the chief example of how his charter cities would work in practice. He explains how they might cut the political-economic Gordian knot of societies too stuck in the past to make obviously needed rule changes that open the floodgates of ideas and entrepreneurship. These were the key themes of my paper.

Also check out this working paper by Romer that surveys the economic growth literature (hat tip: Growthology).

Roger Altman sees many of the same slow-growth problems that David Malpass warned against . . .

federal deficits may average a stunning $1 trillion annually over the next 10 years. This worsened outlook is stirring unease on Main Street and beginning to reorder priorities for President Barack Obama . . . .

The burst of spending in recent years and the growing likelihood of a weak economic recovery. The latter would mean considerably lower federal revenues, the compiling of more interest on our growing debt, and thus higher deficits. . . . the latest data suggests that we’re on a much slower path. Probably along the lines of the most recent Goldman Sachs and International Monetary Fund forecasts, whose growth rates average about 2% for 2010-2011.

A speedy recovery is highly unlikely . . . .

. . . but unlike Malpass’s pro-growth strategy, Altman proposes to make matters worse:

we’ll have to raise taxes.

Today, the U.S. ranks next to last among the 28 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development nations in total federal revenue as a share of GDP. Our federal revenues represent 18% of national output, down from 20% just 10 years ago. That makes the mismatch between our spending and our revenue very large, producing the huge deficits we face.

We all know the recent and bitter history of tax struggles in Washington, let alone Mr. Obama’s pledge to exempt those earning less than $250,000 from higher income taxes. This suggests that, possibly next year, Congress will seriously consider a value-added tax (VAT). A bipartisan deficit reduction commission, structured like the one on Social Security headed by Alan Greenspan in 1982, may be necessary to create sufficient support for a VAT or other new taxes.

. . . it is no longer a matter of whether tax revenues must increase, but how.