Understanding the national debt and the risks of a fiscal crisis

Join leading economists from HKS and Brandeis University to learn about the sources of the unprecedented rise in U.S. debt. Topics will include:

• What are the sources of the rise in U.S. federal debt?
• How was high debt brought down after World War II and are there lessons for today from that experience?
• How do higher debt, interest rates, and the structure of debt maturity affect the interest burden of the debt?
• How does high debt tie the government’s hands and limit its ability to address challenges?
• Does high debt lead to inflation?
• How and when does a fiscal problem become a fiscal crisis, and what happens then?

Panelists

• Daniel Bergstresser is an associate professor of finance at the Brandeis International Business School.
• Karen Dynan is professor of the practice in the Department of Economics and at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
• Douglas Elmendorf is a Harvard University distinguished service professor. He served as dean of the Harvard Kennedy School and previously as director of the Congressional Budget Office.

Moderators

• Michael Klein is the William L. Clayton Professor of International Economic Affairs at The Fletcher School at Tufts University and is founder and executive editor of EconoFact.
• Clark Merrefield is senior editor for economics and legal systems at The Journalist’s Resource.

This webinar is co-hosted by The Journalist's Resource, a project of the Shoresntein Center at HKS, and EconoFact, a non-partisan economics analysis and research publication based at Tufts University.