This paper offers a straightforward and descriptive contribution to the recent and busy debate on fiscal discipline made popular by the seminal Reinhart and Rogoff (2010; Growth in a time of debt. American Economic Review, vol. 100, no. 2, 573–78) paper. We find that with further hindsight, and from a time series perspective, there is little to no support for the view that higher levels of debt cause reductions in economic activity. In contrast to Reinhart and Rogoff (2010), we suggest that economic slumps tend to cause debt build-ups rather than vice versa.
