Fed Chair Ben Bernanke a few weeks ago said he saw some green shoots
of favorable developments in financial markets. Does today’s Labor Department report that the seasonally adjusted number of initial claims for unemployment insurance fell by 20,000 workers in the most recent week constitute another?
Author Archives: James_Hamilton
Some useful resources
Hal Varian and Hyunyoung Choi (paper here) document the usefulness of Google Trends and Google Insights for Search for purposes of updating assessments of current economic magnitudes. I see that Mark Thoma also calls attention to this intriguing data source.
Scott Irwin has collected an archive with some of the difficult-to-find classics in commodity research.
2009 NCAA Bracket Econbrowser Challenge Winner
Congratulations to King Steve, the winner of the
2009 NCAA Bracket Econbrowser Challenge, and to phuphighter, who came in a close second.
March auto sales
Light vehicles sold in the U.S. last month were down 37% from March 2008, whereas February sales had been 41% below year-earlier values. Does a February-to-March increase and smaller year-over-year drop mean that we’ve turned the corner?
Consequences of the Oil Shock of 2007-08
In a follow-up on my earlier post, I’d now like to discuss the second part of my paper, Causes and Consequences of the Oil Shock of 2007-08, which I presented today at a conference at the Brookings Institution. Here I’ll review the role that the oil price shock may have played in causing the economic recession that began in 2007:Q4.
Causes of the Oil Shock of 2007-08
I will be presenting my latest research paper, Causes and Consequences of the Oil Shock of 2007-08, at a conference today at the Brookings Institution. Here I review some results from that paper about what caused oil prices to rise so spectacularly in 2007-08 only to decline even more dramatically afterward.
The Fed’s new balance sheet
My previous post reviewed the profound changes in the balance sheet of the U.S. Federal Reserve over the last 18 months. Here I comment on some of the concerns that the new Fed balance sheet raises for the conduct of monetary policy.
Money creation and the Fed
A lot of people have seen this picture of the recent behavior of the monetary base and wondered what it means.
Is the worst behind us?
A couple of weeks ago we received the encouraging news that retail sales for both January and February were 1.8% above December. On Monday the National Association of Realtors reported that February sales of existing homes were 5.1% above January levels on a seasonally adjusted basis. Today the Census Bureau reported that new orders for manufactured durable goods rose 3.4% in February, with new orders for nondefense capital goods up 7.4%. And also today the Census Bureau reported that new home sales in February were up 4.7% (on a seasonally adjusted basis) relative to January. Is the tide starting to turn?
The first votes are in
The Federal Reserve can’t be entirely pleased with markets’ reaction to its announcement on Wednesday of quantitative goals for purchases of long-term assets.