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Hi, have you seen this?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/apr/18/uncovered-error-george-osborn...
Much of the recovery plans and debt correction ideas were based on a spreadsheet that has now been found to be in error due to a bad equation:
"The correction is substantial: the [original] paper said that countries with 90% debt ratios see their economies shrink by 0.1%. Instead, it should have found that they grow by 2.2% – less than those with lower debt ratios, but not a spiralling collapse. Yet cutting public spending to avoid that contraction has become a linchpin of both George Osborne's and the IMF's policies."
"The focus now is on whether [...] politicians and bankers will stick with programmes that are having dubious effect."
"The paper [...] came under scrutiny after [... the researchers ...] released the spreadsheet calculations underpinning their model to rival academics at Massachusetts University. The error was discovered by Thomas Herndon, a PhD economics student at Massachusetts."
The rest of the article seems to be about people trying to claim that the cuts are still vital and that the paper is only a little bit wrong.
This is, as far as I can see, pretty massive. Certainly a big case for free access to data being part of our economics research methods. If a phd student can spot an error, then chances are this error would have been found almost immediately on the release of this data and we would not be in this appalling position.
Anna