Here’s the U.Michigan sentiment indices for three partisan groupings, vs. the SF Fed News Sentiment index.
Author Archives: Menzie Chinn
Recession in 2022?
From reader JohnH in September 2022, who now states he “was not cheering a recession in mid-2022”.
Some Reactions to the Employment Situation Release for January
Here’s FoxBusiness’s web coverage of the employment release (around 4pm CT):
Alternative Business Cycle Indicators
The key indicators followed by the NBER Business Cycle Dating Committee, in light of today’s employment release, is discussed here. However, several alternative indicators have been proposed (some of dubious usefulness, like Vehicle Miles Traveled and gasoline consumption). Here’s a graph over the corresponding time period, normalized to 2022M11.
Business Cycle Indicators at the Beginning of February 2024
January NFP employment growth surprises on the upside (to say the least), at +353 vs. +187 consensus. On the back of monthly GDP and Q1 nowcasts, the economy seems to be continuing to grow apace.
Employment in January: Benchmark Revisions, Seasonality, Population Controls
The Employment Situation release for January 2024 incorporated annual benchmark revisions to establishment survey series, and reported population controls for the household survey series. NFP at +353 vs. +187 thousands Bloomberg consensus. (Last year at this time, NFP again surprised, at +517 thousand exceeding the Bloomberg consensus of +115 thousand.)
Business Cycle Indicators on the Eve of the January Employment Situation Release
SPGMI monthly GDP m/m growth for December shoots up at an annualized 12.2%, after 9.8% in November.
Probability of Recession: Term Spread vs. Term Spread, DSR, Foreign Term Spread
In this post from Monday, I recounted the US results from Chinn-Ferrara (2024), using debt-service ratio data up to end-2022. The BIS has now released debt-service ratio data up to Q2. I use a regression of DSR growth rate on changes in AAA and 3 month Treasury yields, and 2 lags of DSR growth to forecast 2023Q3 DSR. I then obtain the following estimate of recession probability through 2024M09.
“The Ukrainian War Economy”
Yuriy Gorodnichenko speaks at the Markus Academy (hosted at Princeton University), Friday, February 2, 12:30 PM ET. Yuriy Gorodnichenko is the inaugural Quantedge Presidential Chair in Economics at UC Berkeley.
Evaluating 25 Years of ECB (Policy)
On 16 January 2024, the second ECB@25 Symposium was hosted by Professor Mary Pieterse-Bloem (Erasmus School of Economics Professor of Financial Markets) at our Pavilion.