In studies concluding that public debt may hamper GDP growth, the debt tipping effects are estimated as if there were a single global currency. This means that such studies ignore the likely biggest cause of changes in growth rates, namely damage from exchange rate liquidity shocks because we do...

This paper's field evidence is: (1) in reality a major exchange rate change devastates an economy, i.e. the widespread academic faith that exchange rate changes are either beneficial or harmless is a false faith that contributes to needless world-wide economic havoc; (2) the 1982-85 exchange rate...