My wife Laura Schwendinger, and Ginger Strand, were awarded this prize by the American Academy of Arts and Letters, for their opera Artemisia.
Author Archives: Menzie Chinn
“Uncertainty, Economic Activity, and Forecasting in a Changing Environment”
That’s the title of a conference in Padova, September 21-22. Call for papers (deadline 5/31!).
X-Date Estimate – June 5 or so?
From Zeng and Ryan at DeutscheBank yesterday.
Percent vs. Percentage Points…and…Exponential vs. Linear
One can talk about a percent increase in a profit margin… but that really only serves to confuse.
Why Might Firms Raise Prices Faster than Input Prices?
Josh Bivens at EPI has recently presented a decomposition of price changes into those attributable to price-cost margins (i.e., roughly profits), labor and nonlabor input prices, to wit:
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One Year US Treasury CDS
What’s the chances? Depends on what the assumed recovery rate is. Here’s the cost of insurance.
Negative GDP Growth Is Delayed Again
In the Survey of Professional Forecasters median, but some still see it as likely). Here’s an interesting picture from the latest Survey of Professional Forecasters and GDPNow.
Federal Debt to GDP – When Did It Jump? Where Is It Going Now?
Regardless of gross or net, at par or market value, as a ratio to GDP or potential GDP, the answer is pretty obvious.
Business Cycle Indicators at Mid-May
With the industrial production release showing an upside surprise (0.5% m/m vs -0.1 consensus) due to an outsized manufacturing increase (1% vs. 0.1% consensus), this is the picture of the series the NBER Business Cycle Dating Committee (BCDC), plus monthly GDP from S&P Global Market Intelligence (SPGMI) formerly Macroeconomic Advisers.
Oil, Risk, and Price Pressures before Putin/Ukraine – using the Hamilton Filter
Reader Erik Poole suggests using the Hamilton filter instead of the Hodrick-Prescott filter, in assessing how much the CPI deviated from trend (recall, i noted that the CPI rose 2% vs trend at the same time as oil prices were elevated, before and after the expanded Russian invasion of Ukraine). I am (more than) happy to oblige.