FRB: IFDP Note: Debt Statistics a la Carte: Alternative Recipes for Measuring Government Indebtedness

FRB: IFDP Note: Debt Statistics a la Carte: Alternative Recipes for Measuring Government Indebtedness

1. Introduction
According to Eurostat, the Greek government owed Euro 317 billion in debt at the end of 2014. This is equivalent to more than 177% of GDP, 387% of tax revenue and amounts to almost Euro 30,000 per person. This seems like a very large sum. For comparison, of the other highly indebted European countries that received financial assistance, Portuguese government debt amounted to 130% of GDP while Irish government debt amounted to 110% of GDP.

As a result of these large debt numbers, there have been increasing calls for debt relief to be offered to Greece and, in some cases, also to the other highly indebted countries of Europe......