Seldom do we see such market moving data.
Continue readingIf You Pay Inordinate Attention to the State Level Unemployment Series
You should start looking at the state level household employment series; (the unemployment rate is calculated using this variable). Here is Wisconsin’s, as of today’s release.
Continue readingPredictIt on Whether the Federal Government Will Be Closed on 1/18 (or later…)
Policy Uncertainty and the Term Spread over the Government Closure
Elevated on the first, up then down on the second.
Continue reading“Agent Orange: Trump, Soft Power, and Exports”
That’s the title of a new paper by Andy Rose:
A country’s exports rise when its leadership is approved by other countries. I show this using a standard gravity model of bilateral exports, a panel of data from 2006 through 2017, and an annual Gallup survey which asks people in up to 157 countries whether they approve of the job performance of the leadership of China, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States. Holding other things constant, a country’s exports are higher if its leadership is approved by the importer; ‘soft power’ promotes exports. The soft power effect is statistically and economically significant; a one percent increase in leadership approval raises exports by around two-thirds of a percent. This effect is reasonably robust, and different measures of soft power deliver similar results. I conservatively estimate that the >20 percentage point decline in foreign approval of American leadership between 2016 (the final year of Obama’s presidency) and 2017 (Trump’s first year) lowered American exports by at least $3 billion.
Ungated version here.
Adding Insult to Injury
Mr. Trump considers redirecting funds committed to rebuilding Puerto Rico toward the building of the Wall. From WaPo:
Continue readingMarket Expectations on the Shutdown: 65% Ending on 18th or After
as of 10PM Eastern:
Continue reading“International Spillovers of Monetary Policy: Conventional Policy vs. Quantitative Easing”
That’s the title of a fascinating new paper with important policy implications.
Continue reading“A Third of a Century of Currency Expectations Data: The Carry Trade and the Risk Premium”
That’s the title of a new paper, coauthored with Jeffrey Frankel, using data extending back to August 1986.
Continue readingJindal-nomics Illustrated
In response to my graph of Louisiana GDP, Manfred asks:
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