That’s the title of a conference (June 16-17) I had the pleasure of participating in. The agenda is shown below (I have included links to the papers where publicly available, but they might not be to the most recent version; Online agenda). This conference went well beyond recounting the main features associated with the dollar’s role, presenting both new empirical work (some based on micro data) and new theoretical work — ranging from the dominant currency pricing in a New Keynesian model to an explanation for staged capital account liberalization for the Chinese bond market, against a backdrop of rapid developments in digital currencies/assets and financial sanctions.
Miscalculating potential GDP
How did the Fed get this so wrong?
Continue reading
So You Think We Might Be In a Recession Today?
For the consideration of some people.
The Sahm Rule for determining a recession onset in real time is based on a greater than 50 bps increase in the 3 month moving average unemployment rate relative to its low in the preceding 12 months. This is the picture, using the May 2022 employment situation release data.
Business Cycles in the NBER Business Cycle Dating Committee Framework (edition XLXIV)
Some people assert when polls of the public indicate a majority think we’re in a recession, we’re in a recession, definitionally. Some people believe that when there are two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth, we’re in a recession. Well, any given person can define a banana as a spherical fruit, but it is sometimes useful to define what a recession is, as defined by the scholars who coined the term, or who have been understood to be the arbiters of the term in quasi official terms. From the NBER’s Business Cycle Dating Committee FAQs webpage:
IGM-FT Macroeconomists survey for June
Results from the survey (taken June 6-8), re: GDP, prices, recession:
Inflation in May
Month-on-month vs year-on-year, and headline, chained, sticky price, 16% trimmed, and (for April) PCE deflator.
The Demise of Dollar Dominance?
“The Michigan Index indicates that we are already in an oil shock recession”
That’s a comment by a reader. The index is indeed correlated with recessions, but not necessarily with oil shock recessions only, nor is it always an indicator of a recession.
Guest Contribution: “No, the US Is Not In Recession”
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 of this commentary appeared in Barron’s magazine, June 8, 2022. For a video interview, see BNN/Bloomberg, June 8.
Business Cycle Indicators, June 9
With the release of employment last Friday, we have the following picture of series followed by the NBER BCDC.