Monthly Archives: March 2014

“The Jeep Plant Mitt Romney Said Was Moving to China Is Hiring 1,000 Workers in Ohio”

That’s the point of a Bloomberg article:

Anyway, that Jeep plant? It didn’t move to China. And it’s actually doing quite well. No, scratch that: It’s going gangbusters. Demand for Jeeps is so high that Chrysler workers are clocking 60 hours a week and still can’t keep up.

Figure 1 illustrates the context.

autopix

Figure 1: Auto and motor vehicle sales, thousands of units (blue, left scale), and Chicago Fed motor vehicle manufacturing index, 2007=100 (red, right scale), both seasonally adjusted. NBER defined recession dates shaded gray. Vertical dashed line at “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt”. Source: FRED.

Update, 3/16, 6PM Pacific: Reader Patrick R. Sullivan writes:

Looking at Figure 1, I’d say that sales of cars are pathetic. Only back to the level of 2005. And that after years of far below normal sales figures, which should have resulted in pent-up demand. This is nothing to brag about for this economy.

I think it is useful when thinking about production trends to consider the end-use of the product. One interesting point is that vehicle miles driven has declined, and is essentially flat, despite the fact that GDP has exceeded pre-recession peaks. This is shown in Figure 2.

vmd_millions

Figure 2: Vehicle miles driven, 12 month moving average, in millions. NBER defined recession dates shaded gray. Source: Federal Highway Administration via FRED.

“Fiscal Policy Re-Assessed”

From an article in the La Follette Policy Review:

In 2010 as the Great Recession was releasing its grip on the world’s economy, the United Kingdom’s newly elected Conservative-Liberal government embarked upon a policy of fiscal consolidation—higher taxes and drastically reduced spending—with the aim of stabilizing the ratio of government debt to gross domestic product (GDP) while spurring economic growth….

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Guest Contribution: “Regional Trade Agreements with Labor Clauses”

The effects on labor standards and trade

Today we are fortunate to have a guest contribution written by Isao Kamata, Assistant Professor of Public Affairs and Economics at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. This post is based upon this working paper; the paper also circulates as a Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI) discussion paper.


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Relaxing restrictions on U.S. exports of oil and natural gas

Tensions between Russia and Ukraine have prompted some discussion of revisiting U.S. policy on exports of oil and natural gas.
Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH)
last week called for faster Energy Department approval of facilities to export liquefied natural gas (LNG). Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) called for lifting the ban on U.S. crude oil exports. Here I offer an assessment of these proposals.

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