In both academic research and policymaking, public sector debt and debt-to-GDP ratios are relied on for a multitude of important economic, political and socioeconomic decisions, especially as public sector balance sheets expand to an unprecedented size in the midst of the 2019–2020 COVID pandemic. The reliance on available data from reputable sources often overlooks the question of whether the denominator in this ratio is accurately measured or how well the denominator is understood by the audience interpreting it. Building on past work in international financial statistics, and making use of a unique and newly created dataset on media reporting of public sector debt, the purpose of this article is to examine the quality, accuracy, interpretation and overall meaningfulness of public sector financial statistics. The main findings suggest that i) most of the world’s governments still do not seem to feel sufficient pressure to voluntarily provide comprehensive financial statistics based on well-defined modern methodological frameworks and ii) high profile financial statistics, which are reported, have become increasingly numerous and complicated, making it difficult for non-experts to know which is most appropriate in the context of their analysis.

中文翻译：

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苹果、橙子和柠檬：21 世纪的公共部门债务统计

在学术研究和政策制定中，公共部门债务和债务与 GDP 的比率依赖于许多重要的经济、政治和社会经济决策，尤其是在 2019 年中期公共部门资产负债表扩大到前所未有的规模时—— 2020年新型冠状病毒大流行。对来自可靠来源的可用数据的依赖往往忽略了这个比率中的分母是否被准确测量或解释它的观众对分母的理解程度的问题。本文以国际金融统计过去的工作为基础，并利用一个独特的新创建的公共部门债务媒体报道数据集，目的是检查公共部门金融统计的质量、准确性、解释和整体意义。