Government Debt Indicators: Understanding the Data

Bloch, Debra; Fall, Falilou

doi:10.2139/ssrn.2673985

Cited by 17 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…2. For inflation, see (Boskin et al, 1998;Johnson, 2015;Mackie & Schultze, 2002); for unemployment (author; Baxandall, 2004;Green, 2000); for public debt (Bloch & Fall, 2015); for economic growth (Shaikh & Tonak, 1994;Stiglitz et al, 2010;Fleurbaey & Blanchet, 2013); for the balance of payments (UNECE & Eurostat & OECD, 2011;Kerner, 2014;author); for productivity statistics (Block & Burns, 1986;Guvenen et al, 2017). 3.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Consider some examples: headline public debt figures systematically ignore public pension liabilities, offering a skewed image of fiscal sustainability (Bloch & Fall, 2015). Harmonized inflation indices in the EU have traditionally excluded owneroccupied housing-arguably the crucial item determining people's cost of living during the real estate booms and busts of the past decades.…”

Section: Biases Big and Smallmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Espeland & Sauder, 2007). Debt to GDP ratios, for example, suffer from significant measurement ambiguities (Bloch & Fall, 2015). But they shape investor perceptions of fiscal probity and, when they trigger adverse market reactions, can shape policy itself (Mosley, 2003).…”

Section: Statistics In Political Practicementioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Economic statistics as political artefacts

Mügge

2020

Review of International Political Economy

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Macroeconomic statistics simultaneously shape and try to capture the political economy we study. Their biases mold social and political dynamics; they also infect academic and policy analysis. Political economy can both benefit from and advance an understanding of economic statistics as political artefacts. To help unlock that potential, this article builds on scholarship dispersed across disciplines and highlights three points. First, a binary debate that either acclaims or vilifies economic data is misdirected. Indispensable for public policy, quantification is neither good nor bad per se; the question is what its specific ramifications are. Second, macroeconomic statistics have been built around an ideal of white male factory work for wages. The further economic activity is removed from that image, the more statistics misrepresent or ignore it, with systematic biases as a result. Third, the real-world impact of statistics always depends on how they are understood, used, and subverted. It hinges on statistical practices, not just on abstract measurement approaches. As political economists we are political agents when we define, and reproduce, our object of study. We face both an analytical and a normative imperative to work with and towards statistics that do justice to the world and the people in it.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Biases Big and Smallmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Economic statistics as political artefacts

Mügge

2020

Review of International Political Economy

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“…Bloch and Fall (2015) explore the various issues that arise in defining and measuring debt, and examines other data which should be considered, both within and beyond general government debt, to better track and analyse fiscal risks and sustainability issues. Box 1 summarises the main features of various government debt measures.…”

Section: Gross and Net Debt Definitions: The Narrow And The Broadmentioning

confidence: 99%

Prudent debt targets and fiscal frameworks

Fall

Bloch

Fournier

et al. 2015

OECD Economic Policy Papers

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“…This paper is part of an OECD project on government debt and fiscal frameworks. The other papers include an OECD Economic Policy Paper that summarises the whole project, a working paper that assesses different debt concepts for fiscal risk and sustainability analysis (Bloch and Fall, 2015) and a working paper on macroeconomic uncertainties, prudent debt targets and fiscal rules .…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%