I’m sure there’s a way to spin the February employment release in a negative way — see for instance JEC Republican vice-chair Brady’s take here — but I think it looks pretty good for a recovery after a combination financial crisis/housing bust/recession. [1]
Author Archives: Menzie Chinn
Wisconsin Employment Climbs … to 12,500 below January 2011 Levels
The Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development today released figures for January employment revised to account for benchmark revisions. Nonfarm payroll employment and nonfarm private employment both rose. But the latter just barely exceeded levels of a year previous, while nonfarm payroll employment fell short.
Re-Examining that “Massive Stimulus”
I keep on seeing references to “massive stimulus”, so much I have this feeling of innumeracy everwhere. Here’s one example, provided by a commenter on Free Exchange the day before yesterday, responding to the linked article of Brad Delong:
Global Land Sea Anomaly, Global Climate Change, etc.
Since my last post on government spending increase (it’s actually decreasing) was hijacked by those focused on denying the impact of human activity on global climate, I thought it useful to recap the global land sea anomaly [0]. It’s also useful to recall that on one side is Texas Governor Perry [1], and the other side the National Academy of Sciences [2]. I think that dichotomy speaks volumes.
The “Ever Expanding” Government Illustrated, Part III
Following up on these two previous posts [1] [2], I decided to confront some views commonly held in certain circles with some actual data. To summarize:
- Real government nondefense spending on goods and services is declining, and is declining relative to real GDP.
- The ratio of government outlays to nominal potential GDP is declining.
- Total civilian government employment is declining, and is declining as a share of total nonfarm employment.
More on Potential GDP and the Output Gap
In the wake of St. Louis Fed President James Bullard’s statement on the output gap [0] (which I frankly did not understand), there was renewed debate over output gap measurement [Duy] [Thoma] [Krugman]. I thought this was a good time to recap and update some of the material I’d written on this subject of output gaps.
Famous Conditional Forecasts from the Real Business Cycle Side
Or, who else misunderstood the nature of the financial crisis and recession
As I was reviewing material to use in teaching how new classical models relate to the popular aggregate demand/aggregate supply models [0] used in policy analysis, I ran into this forecast in the real business cycle vein from October 26, 2008.
Barring a nuclear war or other violent national disaster, employment will not drop below 134,000,000 and real GDP will not drop below $11 trillion.
The 2012 Economic Report of the President
Markups, Competitiveness, and the Bush Tax Cuts and Deficits
The Administration released the annual Economic Report of the President on Friday. Many topics were covered, but here I’ll remark upon a few issues, motivated by several graphs.
Motor Vehicle Output and Sales, Three Years after the Deluge
Here is a summary graph of the state of the US motor vehicle industry, as indicated in the last GDP release.
Guest Contribution: “International Reserves and the Composition of Equity Capital Inflows”
By Xingwang Qian and Andreas Steiner
Today, we’re fortunate to have Xingwang Qian, Assistant Professor of Economics at SUNY Buffalo State and Andreas Steiner, Assistant Professor at University of Osnabrück
,
as Guest Contributors.