The fiscal theory of the price level posits that the price level of an economy adjusts so that the real value of nominal debt equals the present value of future surpluses. This paper seeks to test this theory using historical data across countries to compare real government debt with an ex-post rational measure of discounted surpluses using similar volatility tests that have been used to determine whether stock prices are more or less volatile than an ex-post rational measure of the present discounted value of future dividends and cash flows. We find that real government debt is less volatile than ex-post discounted fiscal surpluses, suggesting there may be some role for a bubble term in the fiscal theory of the price level equation and that economic agents in the economy may lack information or be inattentive about the state of the government’s fiscal affairs.