Month: October 2012
I know this is a serious and sensitive topic to some people so I don’t mean to suggest that the hurricane is a good thing, because it is obviously not. My parents are located a good 50 feet north of the mandatory evacuation line on Long Island and there will likely be some flooding damage to my house. I only mean to think about some of the positives it may bring rather than focus only on the bad…
…how much are Americans willing to pay for independence?… Planet Money has a nice segment today [Oct 26] arguing that Energy Independence Wouldn’t Make Gasoline…
Here’s a link to a discussion of monetary policy on the DeLong-Friedman axis at The Money Illusion.
http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2012/09/12/higher-bubble-will-inevitably-burst/2unIRnoObbvgM9fHAp2U5N/story.html This article speculates that the next economic bubble to burst in the United States is that of higher education. The author asserts that over…
Bloomberg article today regarding Vietnam’s growth policy and possible shortcoming: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-22/vietnam-will-struggle-to-meet-2012-growth-target-southeast-asia.html The full year target was 5.2% national growth, but will probably fall short unless…
Andrew Berg and Jonathan Ostry from the IMF have found an interesting link between income inequality and sustainable economic growth. The authors found that a…
In 2009, the last year for which data is available, employers reported wages of 72.8 billion or 7.7 million workers who could not be matched…
In recent economic news, Minneapolis Fed President Narayana Kocherlakota changed his stance regarding our current extremely low interest rates .In his speech, Kocherlakota advocated keeping…
Here is a graph of the full seasonally corrected CPI vs the core CPI (consumer inflation excluding food and energy). In the short run they…
This Macroeconometrics Primer is a guide to the jargon and core techniques used in empirical papers in macroeconomics. It should provide a good foundation for…
…age composition matters… How long recovery takes depends on the rate of job creation relative to the growth of the working age population. It turns…
In Gordon and Krenn’s 2010 NBER working paper “The End of the Great Depression 1931-1941: Policy Contributions and Fiscal Multipliers” the authors measure and compare…
As per class today, that there might be a non-negative (much less > 1.0) multiplier remains contentious. For an example, see the following post by…
In 2000, Milton Friedman gave a keynote address to the Bank of Canada. In it, he shares some of his thoughts about the newly formed…
I’ve been tracking US employment and unemployment for the past couple years. Here’s an updated version of a graph looking at employment to population. One…
Some of you expressed surprise in class about the structure of US government. Please look at an old blog post of mine that sets forth…
…Romney’s plan is “work with Congress”… Obama did not go for the jugular; he’s not a street fighter. He did not try to get Romney…
The handouts we received (and hopefully read) in preparation for Thursday’s class discuss Milton Friedman and his analysis of inflation and unemployment. Accordingly, Friedman’s views…