Today we are pleased to present a guest contribution written by Hongyi Chen, Senior Advisor at the Hong Kong Institute for Monetary and Financial Research, and Pierre Siklos, Professor of Economics at Wilfrid Laurier University. The views expressed here are their own and do not reflect the official opinions of Hong Kong Institute for Monetary and Financial Research or any other institutions the authors are affiliated with.
Remember assertions that the use of the term “China Virus” in the stead of SARS-CoV-2 or Covid-19 was not only appropriate, but desirable? From Time:
Since the start of the pandemic last spring, Asian Americans have faced racist violence at a much higher rate than previous years. The NYPD reported that hate crimes motivated by anti-Asian sentiment jumped 1,900% in New York City in 2020. Stop AAPI Hate, a reporting database created at the beginning of the pandemic as a response to the increase in racial violence, received 2,808 reports of anti-Asian discrimination between March 19 and December 31, 2020. The violence has continued into 2021, and President Joe Biden signed an executive order denouncing anti-Asian discrimination shortly after taking office in January. While anti-Asian violence has taken place nationwide and particularly in major cities, the uptick in attacks in 2021 has been particularly focused in the Bay Area, especially in San Francisco and Oakland’s Chinatowns.
Well, Steven Kopits, the Asian-American community of America thanks you.
See also WaPo.
If one wanted to assess price trends in “the” US stock market, which measure would one want to use?
There are many people whose brains are “data-free zones”, and this comment is one example of the resulting exposition.
The goods production side of the economy continues to recover while other indicators faltered. Some key indicators followed by the NBER Business Cycle Dating Committee.
The Survey of Professional Forecasters (SPF) February release and the January five year breakeven inflation rate suggest accelerating inflation – up to about 2.1%-2.2%
In this blog, we’ve recently covered production function/bean counting, inverted Phillips curve, and statistical techniques for estimating the level of potential GDP relative to actual GDP — that is the extent of economic slack. Struyven/Hatzius/Bhushan at Goldman Sachs estimate slack at several percentage points greater than that implied by the CBO measure.
Interesting to note that the dollar has declined in tandem with economic policy uncertainty, as measured by the Baker, Bloom & Davis index (and predicted by historical correlations).
As measured by the February WSJ survey. Even then, mean forecast GDP — presumably conditioned on additional government spending and tax cuts — does not hit potential GDP until beginning of 2022.
I’ve discussed in an earlier post the fact that the sum of chain weighted quantities does not usually sum to the corresponding total chain weighted quantity. Here is a more recent example, that demonstrates the dramatic shifts in relative prices of consumption types.