Some infrastructure spending is more stimulative than others.
Author Archives: James_Hamilton
Autos, housing, and the business cycle
Here I offer some observations on what’s been holding back the recovery.
Geography and income
Running a little behind, so I decided today to reprint something I wrote 4 years ago as an excuse to call attention to some charts I still think are pretty interesting.
Home Affordable Refinance Program
Last week the Federal Housing Finance Agency, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac jointly announced changes to the Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP) with the goal of making it easier for some households to refinance their mortgages at lower interest rates. Here I offer some thoughts on this proposal.
Could be worse
The Bureau of Economic Analysis reported today that U.S. real GDP grew at an annual rate of 2.5% during the third quarter of 2011. That’s below the average postwar growth rate of 3.2% and well below the 4.3% growth for an average expansion quarter. Even so, it’s better than any of the previous 3 quarters, and better than many analysts had been expecting when the quarter began in July.
Links for 2011-10-23
Dave Altig and Patrick Higgins at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta have raised their estimate of 2011:Q3 real GDP growth from 1.4% as of the beginning of September to 3.2% currently.
Enterprise Products Partners and Enbridge Inc. announced plans to build a new pipeline from oversupplied Cushing, Oklahoma to the Gulf Coast (hat tip: Jim Brown). I reviewed the great need for such a pipeline here, and this may be one way to get one built without having to wait forever for White House approval.
Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco President John Williams reviews lessons from the last 3 years on the effects of unconventional monetary policy.
Michael Plante and Mine Yucel at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas review the evidence on the role of speculation in recent oil price moves.
Peak production for U.S. oil-producing regions
I’ve just finished a new paper on Oil prices, exhaustible resources, and economic growth, which explores details behind the phenomenal increase in global crude oil production over the last century and a half and the implications if that trend should be reversed. Below I reproduce the paper’s summary of the history of oil production from individual U.S. regions.
Could monetary policy mitigate the real effects of oil shocks?
Michael Levi (hat tip:Marginal Revolution) and Jeremy Kahn are among those who recently rediscovered some earlier research by Ben Bernanke and others that concluded that the economic downturns that followed historical oil price shocks could have been avoided if the Fed had followed a more expansionary monetary policy at the time. Here I call attention to some subsequent research that took another look at their evidence and reached a different conclusion.
Sargent and Sims
I’m a little late getting to this (by standards of cyberspace time anyway), but I wanted to comment on Monday’s announcement about the Nobel prize in economics.
Is another U.S. recession a ‘done deal’?
Today we’re pleased to feature a guest contribution from Michael Dueker, chief economist at Russell Investments and formerly an assistant vice president in the Research Department at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Dueker is also a member of the Blue Chip forecasting panel. Econbrowser readers may remember that in February 2008 Dueker correctly predicted the onset of the current recession, using a model-based forecast. In a depths-of-recession piece from December 2008, he predicted in this forum that the recession would last until July or August of 2009, but that employment growth would not resume until March of 2010. We asked Mike to share the latest macroeconomic predictions from the Dueker Business Cycle Index model, subject to the disclaimer that the content does not constitute investment advice or projections of the stock market or any specific investment.