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.
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China’s economic slowdown
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Author Archives: James_Hamilton
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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.
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Possible scenarios for Greece
It’s very clear that two things have to happen from here. First, Greece needs relief from its mountain of debt, and second, the country needs to find a way to become more competitive economically.
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Anil Kashyap on the Greek crisis
University of Chicago Professor Anil Kashyap has a helpful summary of the Greek financial crisis.
Our distant neighbors
There’ve been some stunning pictures recently sent back from distant parts of our solar system which I wanted to share.
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Renegotiating Greece’s debt
Here are my thoughts on options for handling Greece’s debt.
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The bailouts of 2007-2009
The latest issue of the Journal of Economic Perspectives had a very interesting symposium on the costs and benefits of the various bailouts implemented during the Great Recession.
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