That may seem unlikely – one would think that a bad economic outlook would incline governments to postpone, rather than accelerate, austerity measures. And, in response to her comments, the authors did try to account for the severity of the government’s debt problem as perceived by the markets at the time that the plans were implemented, finding very similar results.
但这看上去似乎不太可能——有人会认为一个悲观的经济预测将促使政府推迟（而不是加速）紧缩措施。同时为了回应她的评论，三位作者也确实尝试对紧缩计划推出时市场对政府债务问题严重性的预期进行了评估，并发现了类似的结果。当然拉梅也可能是对的。但即便顺推这一因果关系，人们可能也会发现政府支出削减或者加税之后会经历一段不景气时期。