In a new working paper, David Austin argues that for a variety of reasons, private agents do not optimize with respect to energy efficiency measures. From Addressing Market Barriers to Energy Efficiency in Buildings:
Author Archives: Menzie Chinn
China’s Trade Surplus
The August numbers are in. From MarketWatch:
China posted a wider-than-expected trade surplus in August as imports unexpectedly contracted from the year-ago period, suggesting anemic domestic demand, according to data released Monday.
The August Employment Report
Policy action is needed, with all deliberate speed.
Representative Ryan on Conditional Macroeconomic Prediction
Are You Better Off Than You Were at the End of the Bush Administration? A Data-Based Assessment
I’ve heard a lot about the “four years ago” comparison. Four years ago, we were on the cusp of Don Luskin’s famous prediction (“… we’re on the brink not of recession, but of accelerating prosperity.”), and Phill Gramm had two months earlier decried the ongoing “mental recession”. [0] It seems to me the more appropriate marker is the last election, in 2008Q4. We can then assess what the data tells us about 2012Q2 vis a vis 2008Q4.
Expectations, Uncovered Interest Parity, and the Zero Interest Bound: New Results
One of the most robust findings in international finance is that interest differentials do not point in the right direction for subsequent exchange rate changes. This means that dollar returns on say one year certificates of deposit in the US and in the UK are not on average equalized. In Chinn and Meredith (2004), we show that this anomaly — if it is one — disappears as one goes to longer horizons. This finding was discussed previously here.
A Debate in Foreign Affairs: Stimulus or Reform
From an exchange in the September/October issue of Foreign Affairs, with Raghuram Rajan, Karl Smith and myself. I write in my comment:
Guest Contribution: “Sticky Prices, Store-Switching, and Effective Price Flexibility”
Today, we are fortunate to have a guest contribution written by Olivier Coibion (UT Austin), Yuriy Gorodnichenko (UC Berkeley), and Gee Hee Hong (Bank of Canada); it is based on The Cyclicality of Sales, Regular and Effective Prices: Business Cycle and Policy Implications.
Romney Campaign on the Tax Policy Center study: “Objective, Third-Party Analysis”
Or, he was for the Tax Policy Center before he was against the Tax Policy Center, and how to assess think tank research.
Central Bank Balance Sheets and Inflation
Given several prominent policymakers have worried about central bank actions leading to high inflation, (e.g. Representative Ryan) it seems reasonable to see how expansions in central bank balance sheets correlate with inflation.