Question: Greece, Ireland, Portugal, and Spain all went through national budget difficulties in recent years. Use the data below to answer questions regarding the sovereign debts of these nations. (All data comes from the OECD and is in billions of current U.S. dollars.)
a. Compute the debt-to-GDP ratio for all four nations in both 2000 and 2010.
b. Compute the average yearly budget deficit for each of the nations over this period.
c. In your judgment, which of the four nations was in the worst fiscal shape in 2010? Use your computations from above to justify your answer.