Authors:

  • Kenneth Rogoff

Excerpt

February 9, 2020, Paper, " With real interest rates hovering near multi-decade lows, and even below today’s slow growth rates, has higher government debt become a proverbial free lunch in many advanced countries?2  It is certainly true that low borrowing rates help justify greater government spending on high social return investment and education projects, and should make governments more relaxed about countercyclical fiscal policy, the “free lunch” perspective is an illusion that ignores most governments’ massive off-balance-sheet obligations, as well the possibility that borrowing rates could rise in a future economic crisis, even if they fell in the last one."

Non-HKS Author Website - Kenneth Rogoff