Economics Roundtable
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.
November Payroll Employment
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?
Click on the chart for a larger version.
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Modeled Behavior (Karl Smith)
"A styllized foray in to the world of highly fashionable ideas.” Karl Smith.
What does Apple owe it’s workers? I’ve read some silly proposals since the big New York Times story on the difficult and sometimes dangerous conditions in it’s factories. For instance, the idea that Apple should give some of it’s massive cash horde to workers in China. But Apple and ...
Lots of people have been tossing back data comparing public and private sector workers in a effort to determine if government workers are “overpaid.”
Here are two questions:
Raise your hand if you think government import policy can over turn the law of comparative advantage. Raise your hand if you think the GS ...Likely prompted by a new CBO study that argues federal workers are overpaid relative to private sector workers, Karl presents two questions I believe meant to imply that the government cannot overpay for workers. I would answer Karl’s questions with a question of my own: if the government ...
Tyler quotes the FT in a post entitled Not your grandpa’s aggregate demand shortfall.
Perhaps but it is your Great^5 Grandapa Aggregate Demand shortfall. The same thing happened in a period of rapid technological growth AND as I may be alone in pounding rapping the table on the importance of, ...
Over at The Economic Policy Institute Blog, Josh Bivens thinks something is missing in the big New York Times story on why Apple makes stuff in China instead of America:
Yes, I’m gettingboring on this topic, but, exchange rates are by far the single most important determinant of U.S. trade performance, so if ...
Kevin Drum replies
So sure, it’s kabuki. All of us who write about politics for a living understand that 90% (at least) of what we do is just shadow boxing. Controversies are invented, then debunked, then invented all over again, and debunked. Sometimes the inventors know perfectly well what they’re ...
Center-left intellectuals in America apparently have a serious problem comprehending the concept of Bullshit.
The entire econ world has borne witness to Paul Krugman tearing out his hair over Zombie Lies. Now, Mark Zandi devotes some several thousands words to overturning the nonsense notion that 70 year old US Government Sponsored ...
I want to mention a couple of things about the BEA Release.
There are at least three sections you may wish to concern yourself with
Percent Change From Previous Period Contribution to GDP Growth Level and ChangePercent Change From Previous Period
The first section tells you the annualized rate of growth of different sectors of ...
I wanted to make some more points about GDP. They are all sort of related but I am not sure that I will get a chance to tie them in a nice bow.
GDP by Any Other Name
Bryan Caplan notes
a big part of the philosophy of GDP is to eschew ...
The longer this recession goes on the more people are going to forget that in the long run job creation doesn’t matter. Because output is below potential and employment is below the natural rate, we do care about job creation in the short run. The slower the recovery is, and ...