My base scenario is a slow recovery. However, I have always viewed — given the sheer incompetence of the Trump administration — the possibility of a double dip recession as a real one. Today, Diane Swonk lays out the case:
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Guest Contribution: “The impact of the pandemic on developing countries”
Today, we present a guest post written by Jeffrey Frankel, Harpel Professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and formerly a member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. A shorter version appeared in Project Syndicate.
Economists’ Public Letter on Recovery Policy: State Aid, SNAP, UI
Public Letter on Recovery Policy (from Scholar’s Strategy Network), released today:
CfP: “International Capital Flows and Financial Globalisation”
From Trinity College Dublin:
CALL FOR PAPERS
IM-TCD half-day workshop on:
International Capital Flows and Financial Globalisation
Date: December 17th, 2020
Venue: Zoom
The Swedish Experiment, Illustrated
Reader Bruce Hall, like all too many other people, thinks Sweden is doing just great. Here’re some data pertaining to the performance of its neighbors.
GDP Nowcasts, June 26th
- GDPNow 6/26 -39.5%
- NY Fed nowcast 6/26 -16.3%
- St. Louis Fed 6/26 -38.14%
- IHS 6/26 -35.3%
GDP Now estimates over time:
Some reasons why nowcasts differ, by Jim Hamilton.
State and Local Employment in the Covid Recession
Employment has been cut tremendously. With massive impending revenue shortfalls, state and local spending will continue to remain depressed, placing a drag on the economic recovery – just as austerity measures slowed the recovery from the Great recession.
Business Cycle Indicators, June 16, 2020
As of today, here are key monthly indicators followed by the NBER Business Cycle Dating Committee:
Figure 1: Nonfarm payroll employment (blue), industrial production (red), personal income excluding transfers in Ch.2012$ (green), manufacturing and trade sales in Ch.2012$ (black), and monthly GDP in Ch.2012$ (pink), all log normalized to 2019M02=0. Source: BLS, Federal Reserve, BEA, via FRED, Macroeconomic Advisers (5/29 release), Bloomberg, and author’s calculations.
The NBER Business cycle Dating Committee has dated the most recent peak at February 2020 for monthly data, and 2019Q4 for quarterly. Jeffrey Frankel describes the reasoning for this date.
Q2 nowcast from Atlanta Fed is -48.5% (6/9), from NY Fed is -25.9% (6/12), St. Louis Fed is -38.9%(6/12), all SAAR. IHS Markit is -37.4% as of today.
NY Times Cover for 5/24/2020
Trump’s Implicit Valuation of Life: Back of Envelope Calculations from the Pandemic Response
According to researchers at Columbia University, implementation of shelter-in-place/social distance measures one week earlier would’ve saved 36,000 lives. Given the GDP that was generated in that one week, this implies Trump’s implicit valuation of one life is $1.16 million (compared to typical Value of Statistical Life of about $11 million).