Over the period of the Great Moderation, has inflation responded linearly to the output gap?
Author Archives: Menzie Chinn
The Government Spending to GDP Ratio: Down, Down, Down
Assessing the importance of direct government expenditures on goods and services [Edits to clear up ambiguity in terminology for readers Salim and Jeff — MDC 12/18].
Using Chain Weighted Quantities
A cautionary tale for my undergraduate economics students
Reader Steven Kopits wonders why, in order to show the relative prominence of government spending, I don’t merely take the ratio of one real index to another real index. Specifically, he admonishes me:
I find this presentation confusing. … Is it not possible to present this data as a simple percent of GDP?
The Ever-Expanding Government Meme Lives On
I happened to catch Americans for Prosperity‘s Tim Phillips talking about the ever growing government [1], in the context of the recent budget deal. Here’s what the actual data indicate:
Compensation, Productivity and Labor Share
Productivity outpaces real wages, deflated using the output deflator, or using the CPI.
The Output Gap: Cumulative Losses, 2013Q3
Today, I gave a presentation in the Wisconsin Alumni Association’s Global Hot Spot series, entitled America’s Macroeconomic Policies and the Global Economy. One figure from the presentation bears highlighting.
Coincident Indices for Wisconsin, Minnesota, California and the US
The Philadelphia Fed coincident indices for October are out. Figure 1 presents the log series, normalized to January 2011 = 0.
Trade Financing Use of China’s Yuan
From Reuters:
China’s yuan currency overtook the euro in October, becoming the second-most used currency in trade finance, global transaction services organization SWIFT said on Tuesday.
Some Observations on the Efficacy of Monetary and Fiscal Policy
Japan edition
Inflation and output are up. So too is gross fixed capital investment. The yen is weaker, and the real quantity of net exports is higher.
Fiscal Drag in 2013
From Torsten Slok at Deutsche Bank:
[F]iscal drag in 2013 is 2.4%, ie if GDP growth in 2013 ends up being 1.7% then if we had not had the fiscal drag then GDP growth would instead have been 4.1% (=1.7% + 2.4%). ..