The perils of centrist economics in a polarised world | Kenneth Rogoff

"After its publication, I received more than 20 death threats, some clearly from drug dealers and gun owners outraged by my call to phase out $100 bills, and others from crypto evangelists who considered my support for regulation an act of treason. I didn't mind the threats as much as one might expect. As unhinged as some of these people were, at least they had understood the book's arguments, they just vehemently disagreed with them."

"The same cannot be said of the 2013 uproar over my work with Carmen Reinhart. That episode began when three University of Massachusetts Amherst economists argued that our six-page 2010 conference paper Growth in a Time of Debt contained multiple errors that had supposedly misled policymakers in Europe and the United States into adopting harmful austerity measures in the aftermath of the global financial crisis. The ensuing outrage fostered a false narrative that persists to this day."

"In reality, our paper contained only a single error. Critically, that error did not appear in the full-length edited journal version, published in 2012, which was based on a much larger and more complete dataset. As Stanford's Michael Boskin observed at the time, it is hardly unusual for preliminary research to undergo corrections during the revision process. Both versions of the paper reached the same general conclusion: across advanced economies, periods of very high public debt tend to coincide with slower economic growth."

Calls to phase out $100 bills triggered more than twenty death threats from drug dealers, gun owners, and crypto evangelists opposed to regulation. Those threats reflected strong disagreement but suggested at least a comprehension of the arguments. A separate 2013 controversy claimed multiple errors in a six-page 2010 conference paper on debt and growth and alleged policymakers were misled into austerity. The paper in fact contained a single error that did not appear in the 2012 full journal version based on a larger dataset. Both versions found high public debt tends to coincide with slower growth, and revisions during peer review are common.

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