Thomas Herndon (economist)

Thomas Herndon in April 2013

Thomas Herndon (born February 25, 1985 ) is an American doctoral student at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and is aiming for a postgraduate degree in economics . He became known to a wide audience for his criticism of Growth in a Time of Debt , a frequently cited scientific study by economists Kenneth S. Rogoff and Carmen Reinhart .

Discovery of Failures in Growth in a Time of Debt

During his studies, Herndon was given the task of choosing an economic study and calculating the results in a course led by Michael Ash. He chose the study Growth in a Time of Debt and during the semester his attempts to reconstruct the results were unsuccessful. He got in touch with the authors Reinhart and Rogoff. They made their spreadsheet available to him, with which they had come to their results. Herndon found some errors in this document: in the analysis equation, the authors included only 15 of the 20 countries (Australia, Belgium, Denmark, Canada and Austria were forgotten) and for some countries crucial data were missing. It also questions the method of calculating the average of countries of different sizes.

Web links

• Marc Brost, Mark Schieritz, Wolfgang Uchatius: National debt: offset! ; The time 27/2013 from June 27, 2013
• Thomas Herndon, Michael Ash, Robert Pollin: Does High Public Debt Consistently Stifle Economic Growth? A Critique of Reinhart and Rogoff ; Political Economy Research Institute, April 15, 2013 (abstract; complete as pdf; 432 kB )
• Patrick Werner: The dispute about Reinhart / Rogoff in graphics FAZ, June 2, 2013

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Marc Brost / Mark Schieritz / Wolfgang Uchatius: Calculated! In: The time. No. 27, June 27, 2013, p. 17 ff.
2. ↑ Alexander Ruth: Reinhart, Rogoff ... and Herndon: The student who caught out the profs. BBC News Magazine, April 19, 2013, archived from the original on June 25, 2013 ; Retrieved July 4, 2013 .