The employment release for October provided lots of interesting facts. First employment growth is faster than anticipated, and second was faster in September than originally estimated.
Serious Thinking about Imprecision in Economic Statistics
Reader rsm responds to my citation of GDP and Human Development Index data thusly:
Why not include the standard errors?
Again, because they would be so wide, you could tell any story and back it up with data?
Aggregate Real Imports and Exports, through the Trade War
From the advance GDP release:
DNI: “Updated Assessment on Covid-19 Origins
From the declassified (10/29) report (noted in this LA Times article):
Economic Activity and Inflation Measures for September [updated]
While the GDP release dominated the news, we got new looks at economic activity and price pressures on Friday (and monthly GDP today).
Nonresidential Investment-GDP Is Low, but Higher than Just Before the Pandemic
In Jim’s review of the Q3 advance release, he noted disappointments in residential investment. What is also worrying is the deceleration in real business fixed investment growth, and the decline in equipment investment.
“[I]t’s a big IF that soybeans futures are LONG TERM predictors at all”
That’s a quote from an Econbrowser reader who is almost uniformly wrong on all matters related to economics, but it seems useful to me to provide the empirical evidence on futures as predictors, especially as noted in a recent post rising commodity prices have put upward pressure on inflation rates. Further, with the efficiency of futures markets might have changed over time, with greater financialization.
GDP growth: is this as good as it gets?
The Bureau of Economic Analysis announced today that seasonally adjusted U.S. real GDP grew at a 2% annual rate in the third quarter, slightly below the average growth rate of 2.25% that we saw during the previous economic expansion.
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Guest Contribution: “High oil prices can help the environment”
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 at Project Syndicate.
GDP vs. Human Development Index: US, China and Norway
Several commentators (e.g., [1] [2]) keep on taking me to task for citing GDP as if it was the variable of ultimate concern. I have repeatedly noted GDP is a measure of economic activity, not a measure of economic welfare. However, in order to deter these repetitive and sometimes sententious comments, I’ll provide some graphs to illustrate the difference between a measure of economic activity, and a measure of welfare.