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Debt is used to finance and pay for entreprises and business around the world. The levels of debt – how much debt is outstanding – and the flows of debt – how much the level of debt changes over time – are basic macroeconomic data, and vary between countries. Within mainstream economics, levels and flows of ''public'' debt (government debt) are a cause of concern, while levels and flows of ''private'' debt (especially households and corporations) are not seen as being of central importance. == Measuring debt == In measuring debt, stocks and flows are both of interest: stocks are ''amounts, levels'' of debt (e.g., $100) and have units of ''currency'' (such as US Dollars), while flows are ''changes'' in levels – in calculus terms, the derivative – (e.g., $10/year), and have units of ''currency''/''time'' (such as US Dollars/Year). In order to make these stock and flows comparable between countries and across time, one may normalize these by some measure of the size of the country's economy, most often GDP, that is, compute the debt to GDP ratio. For instance, $10 billion in 2000 is a small amount of debt relative to the size of the economy of the United States, but large relative to the size of the economy of Iceland, and dividing by the GDP reflects this. Because GDP is generally quoted with units of currency/year, and debt levels have units of currency, the debt level/GDP ratio has units of ''years,'' which may be interpreted as "how many years it would take to repay the debt if all income went to debt repayment". In practice this cannot happen – some of GDP must go to survival – and historically debt repayment rates during periods of repayment have been about 4%–10% of GDP (as in the United States during the Great Depression and World War II), so practical time to repay debt is rather Debt/GDP times 10–25. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Debt levels and flows」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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