Today, we’re pleased to present a guest contribution by Laurent Ferrara (Professor of Economics at Skema Business School, Paris and Chair of the French Business Cycle Dating Committee).
Business Cycle Indicators – Employment for November 2024
Here are some key indicators followed by NBER’s BCDC, including employment for November (227K vs. 202K consensus, 194K vs. 160K consensus, for NFP, and private NFP respectively).
DiMartino Booth: “We know many government statisticians are very left leaning in nature…”
(Or, ” I have in my hand fifty-seven cases of individuals…”) At 3:44 into this video, this Ms. DiMartino Booth makes this assertion, claiming this is the reason we haven’t seen a recession in the data pre-election.
France’s Sovereign Debt Situation: Some Graphs
Here’re CDS and spreads vis a vis Germany over the past year:
A Contrarian View on Recession Probabilities: Are We Out of the Woods?
As I have observed before, the explanation for why we have not yet seen a recession’s onset in the data yet could be one of the following: (1) the model based on historical correlations is no longer applicable (DGP has changed), (2) we were using the wrong model, (3) the recession is yet to come, but has not yet shown up in the data. In addition, it could be the model was right, and in a probabilistic world, there’s never a sure thing.
Chinn & Ito: “Current account dynamics and saving-investment nexus in a changing and uncertain world”
Open access until 21 January 2025 for the paper in JIMF, paper coauthored with Hiro Ito:
The Declining Driving Miles Intensity of GDP
Trend shifted down, but sensitivity up.
Business Cycle Indicators for October, Including Monthly GDP
Here are key indicators followed by the NBER’s Business Cycle Dating Committee (top indicators employment and person income) plus monthly GDP from S&P (nee Macroeconomic Advisers nee IHS Markit):
Ruble Devaluation Giveth and Devaluation Taketh Away
Consider the ruble/yuan exchange rate.
Wages Nominal and Real across the Distribution
Reader Michael writes:
…high income wage growth has grown much faster than medium and low income wage growth patterns.