Thomas Herndon

Thomas Herndon (born 25 February 1985) is an American graduate student at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and is aiming for a postgraduate degree in economics at. He is best known for his criticism of Growth in a Time of Debt, one frequently cited scientific study of economists Kenneth S. Rogoff and Carmen Reinhart, a wide public. Herndon's research revealed that those in the essay conclusions are false and based on a miscalculation.

Discovery of errors in Growth in a Time of Debt

During his studies Herndon got in a run by Michael Ash course the task of selecting an economic study and the results recalculate. He chose the study Growth in a Time of Debt and during the semester were his attempts to understand the results have not been successful. He took the authors Reinhart and Rogoff on contact. This presented him her spreadsheet available, with which they had come to their results. Herndon found in this document, some errors: in the analysis equation, the authors have only 15 of the 20 countries considered ( Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark and Austria were forgotten) and some countries were missing crucial data. In addition, the method to compute the average of countries is made of different sizes into question.