Tuesday, August 09, 2011

Thank goodness...

(/start sarcasm)

...that we have academics to show us these very counter-intuitive results.

From this paper we get the following deep connection of the dots:

(/end sarcasm)

This paper suggests one possible reason why austerity measures are
often avoided – fear of instability and unrest.14 Expenditure cuts carry a
significant risk of increasing the frequency of riots, anti-government
demonstrations, general strikes, political assassinations, and attempts at
revolutionary overthrow of the established order. While these are lowprobability
events in normal years, they become much more common as
austerity measures are implemented. This may act as a potent brake on
governments. In line with our results on expenditure, Woo (2003) showed that
countries with higher levels of unrest are more indebted. High levels of
instability show a particularly clear connection with fiscal consolidation.

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