Just wondering — where is Ed Lazear when you need him?
Author Archives: Menzie Chinn
Accelerated Employment Growth, Little Inflationary Pressure
Nonfarm payroll employment clocks in substantially above consensus (321,000 vs Bloomberg: mean 230,000, range 140,000 to 275,000), solidifying trend growth. Previous months’ estimates revised upward. Wages continue to rise, but labor costs in productivity adjusted terms are stable.
Keynesian Cassandras? The Sequester Re-Assessed
Professor Tyler Cowen’s anti-Keynesian manifesto has been ably discussed by Professor Simon Wren-Lewis at Mainly Macro. I thought what merited additional attention is Professor Cowen’s first assertion:
1. Keynesians predicted disaster following the American fiscal sequester, and the pace of the recovery accelerated.
A Farewell to Arms?
No more military Keynesianism after G.W. Bush?
Avoiding Lost Decades: European Edition
From Liz Alderman in the NY Times today:
Germany and France Aim to Avert a ‘Lost Decade’
The economy ministers of France and Germany called on Thursday for urgent overhauls and a series of investments in both countries to help prevent them and the eurozone from falling into a stagnation trap.
If Output Is Near Potential, Why Is Inflation so Low?
There is a lot of discussion of how economic slack is fast disappearing, and I expect a lot of push on this view, given continued rapid growth in GDP as reported in today’s second release for 2014Q3. This view seems counter to (1) the CBO estimate of potential GDP and (2) the slow pace of inflation. My suggestion is that there remains a substantial amount of slack out there.
Downgraded: The Macro Outlook in Wisconsin
The Department of Revenue’s Wisconsin Economic Outlook, released last week, details a noticeable deterioration in forecasted economic performance, in just the past eight months.
What have the nonpartisan research agencies ever done for us?
Updated 11/24 2:45PM Pacific to include a list of candidates the GOP is mulling to replace Elmendorf, including Bill Beach (!!!)
(For the youth of today, here is the reference.)
Some Observations on the Wisconsin Employment Outlook
The Walker Administration’s Economic Outlook forecasts private employment in January 2015 will be 115 thousand below the goal set forth by Governor Walker in August 2013. Wisconsin nonfarm payroll employment will not reattain prior peak levels until 2015Q2.
The Japanese GDP Release: The Bad and the Not so Bad
Instead of a 0.2% q/q increase as in the WSJ survey, GDP declined 0.4% [0] [1] It’s pretty bad news, but here are a couple of observations, following up on my previous post on Japan.