Travis Berge and Oscar Jorda of the University of California, Davis have an interesting new paper on statistical criteria for distinguishing economic expansions from recessions.
Author Archives: James_Hamilton
Commodity inflation
Why are the prices of so many commodities rising in an economy that seems to remain quite weak?
Will rising oil prices derail the recovery?
Last April I described new research on the role of oil prices in the recent recession. Here’s an update on what’s happened since then.
Consequences of the Lehman failure
William Sterling of Trilogy Global Advisors has an interesting new paper on the abrupt changes in financial markets subsequent to Lehman’s bankruptcy on September 15, 2008.
Current economic conditions
The U.S. recovery is underway. But so far it doesn’t look as strong as we had been hoping.
A welcome GDP report
The Commerce Department reported today that the seasonally adjusted real value of the nation’s production of goods and services grew at a 3.5% annual rate during the third quarter, a little better than the 3.2% average seen since 1947.
Improving financial regulation and supervision
There were some other very interesting presentations at the conference hosted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston last week. Fed Chair Ben Bernanke spoke on Financial Regulation and Supervision after the Crisis while Princeton Professor Alan Blinder’s message was It’s Broke, Let’s Fix It: Rethinking Financial Regulation. Here I summarize four key reforms these speakers addressed.
Evaluating the new tools of monetary policy
Last week I participated in a conference hosted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, at which I discussed the new lending programs and asset acquisitions pursued by the Federal Reserve over the last two years. Previously I shared with Econbrowser readers empirical evidence on the effects these targeted liquidity operations seem to have had. Below I reproduce my remarks from the conference on the underlying motivation for using such measures, in which I suggested that the critical question is what was the underlying cause of the financial stress to which the Fed was responding. I distinguished between two possible interpretations of how the financial crisis arose.
Unemployment and inflation
Does high unemployment mean that there’s nothing to worry about in terms of inflation?
No L
Real output grew significantly this quarter. Will employment follow?