Economics Roundtable
Calculated Risk
Read the Bill McBride interview.
Jobs
The best summary of the state of our economy is the graph (below) of employment as a fraction of population for people over 16 years old. The decrease is large, but the most troubling feature of the graph is the flat trend .
Click on the image to get a bigger version.
June Payroll Employment
The slowndown in employment growth over the past few months is starting to become more apparent in the graph below.
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Focus on the Problem
U.S. payroll employment peaked at 132.5 million jobs in February 2001. For April 2012, U.S. payroll employment had reached 133.0 million jobs, marking the third month in a row above the February 2001 level.
Click on the image to get a bigger version.
Graph-of-the-Year Candidates
Donald Marron likes European interest rates. Click on the image to get a bigger version. Can you find three distinct subperiods?
Brad DeLong favors the U.S. gdp gap.
Finally, it's hard to argue against the payroll employment graph below (straight from FRED) and the comparison across recessions (courtesy of Calculated Risk).
Looking Up At 2001
In February 2001, U.S. payroll employment peaked at 132.5 million. The November 2011 figure of 131.7 million still falls 800,000 jobs short of the earlier peak.
Click on the chart for a larger version.
Remember M1?
Money Supply M1 growth is now over 20% per year over a 12 month lag. M1 growth has touched 20% before, but not with excess reserves of $1.6 trillion. Where is M1 headed?
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EconModel
The Economics Roundtable is sponsored by EconModel.
The Classic Economic Models cover micro, macro, and financial markets.
Market Power (Phil Miller)
"Selected Musings by an Academic Economist on the Power of Markets”
Jane Austen: game theorist (via Mark Stratton).
Modern game theory is generally dated to 1944, with the publication of von Neumann’s“Theory of Games and Economic Behavior,” which imagined human interactions as a series of moves and countermoves aimed at maximizing “payoff.” Since then ...
When it comes to tickets to LSU football, freshmen students get the scraps. Upperclassmen and the public get the first crack, forcing freshmen to sometimes resort to scalping tickets to get entry to Tiger Stadium. A Louisiana state representative is not a fan of the current system, calling it a ...
When are income taxes not passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices? From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:
And with jock taxes, cities and states can generate revenue without taxing their electorate. The Pittsburgh usage fee does not apply to any full-time city resident.
I think this is right. ...
Back in 2009, President Obama’s “Cash for Clunkers” program was supposed to be a boon for the environment and the economy. During a limited time, consumers could trade in an old gas-guzzling used car for up to $4,500 cash back towards the purchase of a fuel-efficient new car. It ...
Remember the Waldo Canyon fire? Remember the pictures of the homes lost, the dreams shattered? That was a good thing. Really.
The Waldo Canyon fire, as bad as it was, could give the Colorado Springs economy a significant boost over the next five years as homes are restored, rebuilt ...
The scarcity problem: resources, and by extension the goods and services made with them, are more scarce at any point in time than the amount humans want. Therefore, stuff must be rationed. When the price system, for whatever reason, fails to work as a rationing system, something else ...
The historical record on the economic impact of mega events never, ever (and I mean ever) lives up up to the before-the-fact claims of consultants and the events' cheerleading squads. Why wouldn't, say, a Super Bowl have a massive effect on, say, San Francisco? Because San Francisco is already a ...
Belleville officials have passed an ordinance rationing gas — the kind of law not seen in these parts since the national gas crisis in the late 1970s.
The ordinance, approved Thursday night, will take effect Monday.
The last digit on the license plate number of Belleville residents will determine what day they ...
The video features economist Russ Roberts and cameo appearances by Nobel laureate economists Gary Becker, Vernon Smith, and the late Milton Friedman.
I use price anti price-gouging laws as an example of price ceilings. By threatening firms with penalties if they raise prices "too much", government makes ...