Could the price of oil be a value such that the current quantity produced exceeds the current quantity consumed? The answer is yes, and indeed that has been the case for much of the past year.
Continue reading
Author Archives: James_Hamilton
Economic importance of China
How important would an economic downturn in China be for the United States?
Continue reading
Forecasting interest rates
There was lots of action in financial markets last week, with much of the attention focused on the U.S. Federal Reserve. The interest rate on a 10-year U.S. Treasury bond edged up 10 basis points early in the week in anticipation that the Fed might finally raise its target for the short-term interest rate. But it shed all that and more after the Fed announced it was standing pat for now.
Price of CBOE option based on 10-year U.S. Treasury yield; to convert to the Treasury yield itself divide by 10. Source: Google Finance.
Continue reading
Common factors in commodity and asset markets
Increases in oil production in the United States and the Middle East were certainly key factors in the huge drop in oil prices over the last year. Nevertheless, one can’t help but be struck by the fact that the weekly changes in oil prices correlate with dramatic moves in other commodity and financial markets.
Continue reading
U.S. tight oil production decline
U.S. oil production has begun to drop in response to low oil prices, but not as dramatically as many had anticipated.
Continue reading
China’s economic slowdown
U.S. stock prices as measured by the S&P500 fell almost 7% last week. What’s going on?
Value of S&P500 index over last 3 months. Source: Google Finance.
Continue reading
OPEC and world oil supplies
There’s been a remarkable surge in world oil production over the last year. And the United States is only part of the story.
Continue reading
Current economic conditions
The Bureau of Economic Analysis announced today that U.S. real GDP grew at a 2.3% annual rate in the second quarter. You can’t describe the new data as favorable, but I’m still hopeful about what comes next.
Continue reading
Measuring unemployment
New claims for unemployment insurance this week came in at the lowest level in over 40 years. How much slack can there be left in the labor market?
Continue reading
Firm-specific factors in rising income inequality
I spent the last two weeks in Boston at the NBER Summer Institute where I learned about a lot of interesting new economic research. Here I describe a new paper by Jae Song, David Price, Fatih Guvenen, Nicholas Bloom, and Till von Wachter on the role of firm-specific factors in rising income inequality.
Continue reading