What do you think of when you hear the term “public debt?” If you’re familiar with the phrase, you might think about elected officials debating budgets and how to pay for goods and services. Or maybe it’s a vague concept you don’t fully understand.

For today’s episode of The Oxford Comment, we spoke with In Defense of Public Debt co-author Barry Eichengreen, Professor of Economics and Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley, and Jonathan D. Ostry, Deputy Director of the Asia and Pacific Department at the International Monetary Fund, about misconceptions of public debt, how the role of public debt has changed throughout history, and how pandemics such as COVID-19 can affect inequality and the role of public debt in these situations

Learn more about In Defense of Public Debt by Barry Eichengreen, Asmaa El-Ganainy, Rui Esteves, and Kris James Mitchener here: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/in-defense-of-public-debt-9780197577899

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Music: Filaments by Podington Bear is licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License.

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