Found this in my inbox this week:
UC has changed the menu of the health care plans
that will be offered in 2014. Most notably, the three currently available PPO
plans (Anthem Blue Cross PPO, Anthem Plus, and Anthem Lumenos) are being
discontinued. They are replaced by Blue Shield Health Savings Plan and UC
Care.
With so much slack in the economy and so many Americans still looking for jobs, why hasn’t inflation been falling further? University of Texas Professor Olivier Coibion and Berkeley Professor Yuriy Gorodnichenko propose an answer in an interesting new research paper.
I attended a conference this weekend on lessons from the financial crisis for monetary policy. Among many interesting presentations, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco President John Williams provided updated estimates on the effectiveness of large-scale asset purchases and forward guidance.
Like many other Americans and observers around the world, I find the ongoing spectacle in Washington both perplexing and distressing. But having seen the President follow the advice of our mighty blog for choosing the next chair of the Federal Reserve, I feel emboldened now to recommend a course of action for the House Republicans.
Today Econbrowser is pleased to host this guest contribution from Professor Angus Deaton of Princeton University describing some of his experience with political attacks on academic research.
I applaud President Obama for choosing the best person to be the next chair of the Federal Reserve. And I thank Governor Yellen for her willingness to serve the country.
Newly exploited tight oil formations account for more than 100% of the increase in U.S. field production of crude oil since 2005. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy to make money getting oil out of the ground this way.
Those of us who believed that the Fed’s program of large-scale asset purchases had only a modest effect on long-term interest rates seem to have some explaining to do.
Harvard Professor Larry Summers yesterday requested that his name be withdrawn from consideration for next chairman of the Federal Reserve. Let me outsource to a few others for comments.
World oil production stagnated between 2005 and 2007, which given rapid growth in demand from emerging economies sent oil prices shooting up. Some observers suggested that production might never rise much above the levels seen in 2005. Among those who raised this possibility, two of the more thoughtful have changed their mind. Euan Mearns last month summarized what he saw as three (or four) nails in the coffin of peak oil. And Stuart Staniford, an early editor and contributor for the Oil Drum, declared a few weeks ago that the data have spoken.