Reinhart and Rogoff in a written statement today admitted that the UMass researchers accurately point out a coding error that omits several countries from the averages they looked at (in other words, there really was an Excel error), however, they “do not believe this regrettable slip affects in any significant way the central message of the paper or that in our subsequent work.” (The Daily Ticker also reached out to them for an interview.)
Reinart and Rogoff point out the UMass researchers also find lower growth associated with periods when debt is over 90%.
UMASS made Harvard look like amateurs. I always thought Harvard was overrated.
Next time use MSAccess...
If you believe that, I've got a Mars mission report describing how a spacecraft missed the planet entirely because of a units mistake in the navigation program that I can sell you... cheap.
The economic school of idiocracy that now advises our government believes that the economic decisions of 300 million individuals can be reduced to formulas in a spreadsheet. And when those formulas don't produce the expected result, the answer is to go looking for the rogue cell.
Microsoft should add a Help page that advises the ruling class that human behavior cannot be reduced to an Excel file.
“do not believe this regrettable slip affects in any significant way the central message of the paper or that in our subsequent work.”
Sounds like Dan Rather, “The documents were fake, but the story is true”