Today, we present a guest post written by Jeffrey Frankel, Harpel Professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and formerly a member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. A shorter version appeared at Project Syndicate.
Author Archives: Menzie Chinn
Growth Prospects: July WSJ Survey
The slowdown keeps on being moved back — according to consensus — to Q4. Mean forecast is for only one quarter of negative growth, but median has two (Q3, Q4).
Recession: The View from Wisconsin Business
Business Cycle Indicators at Mid-July 2023
Industrial production surprises on the downside (-0.5% vs. 0% Bloomberg consensus m/m), as does manufacturing (-0.3% vs. 0% m/m). Here’s the picture of key indicators followed by the NBER BCDC, along with monthly GDP (SPGMI), as well as GDPNow (Q2 up by 10 bps relative to 7/10).
China Upside Surprise
Q2 GDP and June industrial production above consensus. Retail sales slightly below.
China in Recession?
Interview on CNN with LingLing Wei today, she doesn’t say “recession”, but the idea is there (“struggling, ‘big time'”I think is the phrase). Here’s a picture of industrial production ex.-construction through May, and ECRI’s recession dates (peak-to-trough):
Recession within the Next 12 Months?
Down, from WSJ survey (as noted in article):
Consumer Sentiment: Less “Meh”
Preliminary reading of 72.6 far exceeded Bloomberg consensus of 65.5. That’s an increase of one standard deviation (calculated for the last three years).
Guest Contribution: “Nowcasting with machine learning: two lessons from our recent paper”
Today we are fortunate to present a guest post written by Baptiste Meunier (ECB). The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the institutions they are affiliated with.
“It was the ‘meh’ of times. It was the worst of times…”
Conference Board is on the former, while the U. Michigan sides with the latter.