Thread by @L__Macfarlane

Astonished to read this article by Ken Roghoff, in which he claims that “it has never been remotely obvious to me why the UK should be worrying about reducing its debt–GDP burden”

THREAD: thetimes.co.uk/article/never-…

This is the man whose academic work was widely cited by politicians as justification for implementing austerity. Here is an excerpt from a speech made by George Osborne in 2010:

But in 2013 a young economist, Thomas Herndon, shot to fame after he found major errors in the Roghoff’s empirical work. I spoke to Herndon about the episode back in 2017. You can watch the interview here: opendemocracy.net/neweconomics/v…

As an aside, I also asked Herndon what policy he would implement if he was Treasury Secretary for the day, and this is what he said:

"I‘d be tempted to implement the Keynesian solution of socialising roughly three quarters of all investment" 👌

It’s a damning indictment of the economics profession that people like Roghoff still have top academic positions. And it doesn’t bode well for @thetimes that this was allowed to be published unchallenged