What would bond yields have been if the government had been promising a 13% of GDP deficit, say?
For this year, the IMF's staff think "the very ambitious 5.3 percent of GDP deficit target…will likely be missed".
So nothing to do with the government running a 13% of GDP deficit or having government debt at 120% of GDP?
The debate began with each party leader laying out his or her spending plans in the context of Britain's £90 billion (5% of GDP) deficit.
It has run sizeable fiscal surpluses for several years; even if it were to eschew further cuts and run the 1% of GDP deficit that Mr Bakker predicted, it would be one of the best performances across the EU27.
The Spanish government says it will need to issue debt worth €207 billion ($271 billion) in 2013 and that is on the assumption that the 4.5% of GDP deficit target is met.
In a third specification, we add together those variables that were significant in the first stage and also add other proxies for economic conditions, namely per capita GDP, deficit, debt, and GDP growth, in order to check the robustness of the results.
The Dutch political crisis deepened, however, as opposition politicians said they could not back the prime minister's budget plans, raising doubts over whether the country can meet the 3%-of-GDP deficit target imposed by Brussels.
The mini-budget announced by Romano Prodi, the prime minister, just before Easter was meant to find the 15.5 trillion lire ($9.5 billion) deemed necessary to meet the no-more-than-3%-of-GDP deficit required by the European Union's Maastricht rules for monetary union.
As a percentage of GDP, our deficits have been declining dramatically for three years from their immediate post-crash peak in 2009 and all of the supposedly horrible effects of deficit spending, including runaway inflation and soaring interest rates, have failed to materialize.
