Today we are fortunate to have a guest contribution written by Joseph E. Gagnon of the Peterson Institute of International Economics.
Monthly Archives: June 2012
Links for 2012-06-27
Quick links to another proposal for Europe, and estimates of U.S. consumer benefits from lower natural gas and gasoline prices.
Guest Contribution: “Labor Shares and Corporate Savings”
In a Guest Contribution today, Loukas Karabarbounis and Brent Neiman (University of Chicago) discuss their recent research on “Declining Labor Shares and the Global Rise of Corporate Savings.”
Gasoline prices coming down
West Texas Intermediate crude oil, which had been selling for $105 a barrel at the end of March, fell to $80 a barrel last week, while Brent has come from $125 down to near $90. These price declines will translate into substantial savings for U.S. consumers in the weeks ahead.
Thirty Years Ago Today
A personal reflection on the hazards of nationalist approaches to economic policy discourse
Contractionary Fiscal Contraction Is Even More Contractionary
Once one takes into account spillover effects, which are likely to be large in the Eurozone
Europe in 1931
I was at a conference at the Cato Institute two weeks ago discussing some research by Dartmouth Professor Doug Irwin on the role of the gold standard in the Great Depression of 1929-1933. If you’re interested, you can see a written version of my comments, the slides from my presentation, or a video of the session (my comments begin a little more than half way in). Here I’d like to relate some of the discussion of what happened in Europe in 1931, and comment on some of the parallels with what is going on today.
Austerity, Forced and Unforced
The GIIPS countries on the periphery of Europe are undertaking fiscal retrenchment that is largely self-defeating, because they have little choice given the structure of the eurozone’s governance, and Germany’s policy position. The United States, in contrast, is undertaking reducing government spending not because it has to, but because of an ideology that sees austerity as a convenient means of bludgeoning the opponents of a reasoned fiscal policy.
Options for Europe
This problem is not fixing itself.
Contractionary Fiscal Contraction, Quantified: European Edition
From Deutsche Bank, “Fighting the Clock,” Fixed Income (May 2012) [not online], some estimates of changes in structural balances, multipliers, and output impacts: