Economics Roundtable
-- Recession? --
Are back-to-back quarters of 0.6% GDP growth a recession? The blogs weigh in at Recession?
Will a 2% Fed Funds rate help? Fed Watch
-- Economic Principals --
David Warsh reports the latest on this year's free agent season for academic economists.
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-- Statistics --
137 Commentators
As of 2/19/08, the Economics Roundtable includes
137 commentators.
Paul Krugman
May 11, 2008, 6:46 pm, 290254
In case you’re wondering, I didn’t write about public transit for tomorrow. But I did some homework on the thought that I might, and might as well put it here.
So here’s Exhibit A for the proposition that even in a nation with low overall population density, where the antelope roam ...
May 10, 2008, 8:46 pm, 289989
We’re #1
OK, I knew that US public transit was pathetic compared with Western Europe; but if you try to talk about Europe, people start going on about population density, as if we all lived in Montana or something.
Anyway, Canada has lots of open space, too — and it doesn’t even ...
May 10, 2008, 10:46 am, 289927
The Times reports that ridership on mass transit is surging thanks to high gasoline prices. Good.
But … as of 2005, only 4.7 percent of American workers took mass transit to work. So even a 10% surge in mass transit ridership would take only around half a percent of drivers off ...
May 10, 2008, 8:46 am, 289921
Uh-oh
Brad Setser tells us that the trade numbers, contrary to just about all reporting, are worrisome: strip out the effects of raw material prices, and it looks as if export growth — the only thing that has kept us from having a much worse slowdown — is stalling out.
Meanwhile, the ...
May 9, 2008, 6:46 pm, 289756
Plus the magic of the marketplace
I love The New Yorker — for the wonderful writing, the reporting, the poetry — oh, who am I kidding? Like everyone, I start with the cartoons.
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May 9, 2008, 4:47 pm, 289685
With gasoline prices rising, there’s a lot of speculation about how and whether Americans will change their behavior.
There’s also, it turns out, quite a lot of statistical evidence. We’ve seen real gasoline prices go through big swings over the past 35 years, and we also have cross-sectional evidence: European countries, ...
May 8, 2008, 8:46 pm, 289171
From the WSJ:
Almost half of the economists in the latest Wall Street Journal forecasting survey decided against answering a question on which presidential candidate offers the most responsible fiscal policies. However, Sen. John McCain was the clear favorite of those who answered the question.
McCain offers the most responsible fiscal policies? ...
May 8, 2008, 10:46 am, 288809
Alan Abramowitz has some useful charts:
First, another growth-voting scatterplot:
Growth is good
Second, presidential approval (actually, net approval: approval minus disapproval) versus election results:
So are popular presidents
Also, a number of models find that there’s an 8-year itch: voters tend to turn against the incumbent party if it has held the White ...
May 7, 2008, 4:46 pm, 288332
Does economics determine all?
OK, barring some truly shocking revelation, Barack Obama will be the Democratic nominee. Will he win in November?
The political scientists I talk to basically have the view that nothing much matters in presidential elections except the rate of change in economic conditions — not the level — ...
May 7, 2008, 8:47 am, 288081
I’m on record as saying that Hillary Clinton’s advocacy of a gas-tax holiday, while it wasn’t good policy, didn’t rise to the level of a crime.
Judging from last night’s results, however, it was worse than a crime: it was a mistake.
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