Current estimates of sustainable government debt limits for the US and 26 other OECD countries
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This paper empirically estimates sustainable sovereign debt limits for 27 OECD countries, updating the model in Ghosh et al. (2013). We assess fiscal reaction functions, confirming the fiscal fatigue hypothesis, where gross debt levels exceeding 140-145% of GDP begin to impair a country's ability to manage public spending and deficits. Using historical and projected interest rate-to-economic growth differentials, different country samples and updated time periods, we estimate countries' sustainable debt limits, on both a gross and net of central bank holdings of government debt basis. Gross and net debt limits are between 136%-234% of GDP and 181%-268%, respectively. There are some indications of restricted fiscal flexibility for Canada, France, Italy, the UK, the US, Portugal and Spain. The US, in particular, for one estimate, has a sustainable gross debt limit of 154% of GDP, which is only about 30 percentage points above its current gross debt level, projected to be reached by 2034.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.008 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.005 | 0.007 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".