The Bureau of Economic Analysis announced today that seasonally adjusted U.S. real GDP grew at a 33.1% annual rate in the third quarter. That’s the largest change ever recorded, even bigger than the -31.4% annual rate now reported for 2020:Q2. What do those numbers tell us?
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The issue of diversity in economic discourse has occupied a prominent place over the past few years. The AEA has had long running initiatives to broaden the diversity of individuals in the economics professions, along gender, racial and ethnic lines, but it’s fair to say they have become much more visible as the debate has waxed: https://www.aeaweb.org/resources/best-practices . The last AEA conference had a panel devoted to the topic of racial diversity (video) . A good summary of the argument for promoting diversity in the economics profession is provided by Janet Yellen. A forceful statement on the economics professions gender diversity problem is here.
What about the EconoBlogosphere (or what remains of it)?
Remember Δbt = (r-g)bt-1 + deft , where b is debt/GDP, r is the real interest rate, g is the GDP growth rate, and def is the primary budget deficit/GDP ratio. What’s r?
Figure 1: Ten year constant maturity Treasury yield (black), WSJ October survey mean forecast (green +), CBO July projection (red), and ten year TIPS (teal), all in %. October 2020 is data through 10/26. Source: Federal Reserve via FRED, WSJ, and CBO.
Today we are fortunate to have a guest contribution by Sam Williamson, Emeritus Professor of Economics at Miami University, and President of Measuring Worth. This is the second post in a series; the first post is here.
Today we are fortunate to have a guest contribution by Sam Williamson, Emeritus Professor of Economics at Miami University, and President of Measuring Worth.
In addition to previous open letters, here is one released today, with over 750 signatories:
Nationwide, labor force down 2.7% from February, and down 2.4% from year ago.
The Center for Research on the Wisconsin Economy (CROWE) sponsored a series of talks on the election and economic issues. Yesterday’s talk was by Princeton’s Alan Blinder (former CEA member, former Fed Vice Chair). His talk with Q&A is here (YouTube).
Other visitors included Lee Ohanian, Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach, Casey Mulligan and Brian Riedl (Manhattan Institute).
Two days ago, reader Bruce Hall wrote:
Cases continue to escalate; deaths do not; hospitalizations are basically level. The hyperbole around cases is unfortunate because infections are not categorized for action since asymptomatic to severe are lumped together.
The most recent “excess fatality” count remains solidly in the positive region, despite the severe under-reporting bias in the most recent observations. To see this, consider the most recent estimates for each of the previous vintages of “excess fatalities” calculated as actual-expected.